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Apply your skills in Google Cloud console

Thomas Ampferl

Member since 2020

Diamond League

31923 points
[CEPF L300 Course]: Infrastructure Modernization (updated in 2025) Earned Sep 5, 2025 EDT
[CEPF L300 Course]: Data Analytics Earned Aug 31, 2025 EDT
[CEPF L300 Course]: Infrastructure Modernization Earned Mar 17, 2025 EDT
[CEPF L300 Course]: Databases Earned Apr 12, 2024 EDT
Create and Manage AlloyDB Instances Earned Apr 4, 2024 EDT
Introduction to Large Language Models Earned Aug 21, 2023 EDT
Generative AI Fundamentals Earned Aug 19, 2023 EDT
[Accelerate 2022]: TechCon Lab Bash 2022 Earned Jan 14, 2022 EST
Cloud SQL Earned Jan 3, 2022 EST
Prepare Data for ML APIs on Google Cloud Earned Dec 4, 2021 EST
Baseline: Data, ML, AI Earned Nov 21, 2021 EST
Implement Cloud Security Fundamentals on Google Cloud Earned Nov 20, 2021 EST
Implement DevOps Workflows in Google Cloud Earned Nov 20, 2021 EST
Monitor and Log with Google Cloud Observability Earned Mar 14, 2021 EDT
Engineer Data for Predictive Modeling with BigQuery ML Earned Mar 14, 2021 EDT
Build a Data Warehouse with BigQuery Earned Mar 13, 2021 EST
DevOps Essentials Earned Mar 12, 2021 EST
DEPRECATED BigQuery for Data Warehousing Earned Jan 4, 2021 EST
DEPRECATED BigQuery for Data Analysis Earned Jan 4, 2021 EST
Managing Cloud Infrastructure with Terraform Earned Aug 13, 2020 EDT
DEPRECATED Google Cloud's Operations Suite Earned Aug 13, 2020 EDT
[DEPRECATED] Data Engineering Earned Jul 17, 2020 EDT
Build a Secure Google Cloud Network Earned Jul 4, 2020 EDT
Automate Deployment and Manage Traffic on a Google Cloud Network Earned Jul 4, 2020 EDT
Security & Identity Fundamentals Earned Jul 1, 2020 EDT
Derive Insights from BigQuery Data Earned Jun 26, 2020 EDT
DEPRECATED BigQuery Basics for Data Analysts Earned Jun 25, 2020 EDT
VM Migration Earned Jun 17, 2020 EDT
Deploy Kubernetes Applications on Google Cloud Earned Jun 7, 2020 EDT
Implementing Cloud Load Balancing for Compute Engine Earned Jun 6, 2020 EDT
Develop Your Google Cloud Network Earned Jun 5, 2020 EDT
Set Up a Google Cloud Network Earned Jun 5, 2020 EDT
Cloud Architecture: Design, Implement, and Manage Earned Jun 5, 2020 EDT
Using the Cloud SDK Command Line Earned Jun 5, 2020 EDT
Set Up an App Dev Environment on Google Cloud Earned Jun 2, 2020 EDT
Kubernetes in Google Cloud Earned May 21, 2020 EDT
Google Cloud Essentials Earned May 18, 2020 EDT
Baseline: Infrastructure Earned May 17, 2020 EDT
Cloud Engineering Earned May 16, 2020 EDT
DEPRECATED Cloud Architecture Earned May 15, 2020 EDT
Cloud Architecture - Design, Implement, and Manage Earned May 1, 2020 EDT

This Infrastructure Modernization course consists of a series of advanced-level labs designed to validate your proficiency in modernizing a customer's IT infrastructure using Google Cloud. Each lab presents a set of the required tasks that you must complete with minimal assistance. You must score 80% or higher for each lab to complete this course, and fulfill your CEPF L300 Infrastructure Modernization requirement. For technical issues with a Challenge Lab, please raise a Buganizer ticket using this CEPF Buganizer template: go/cepfl300labsupport To enroll in the course, navigate to the CEPF L300 Infrastructure Modernization Quiz section and click on the Start module button. Upon enrollment, all previously completed labs will be indicated with green check marks.

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This Data Analytics course consists of a series of advanced-level labs designed to validate your proficiency in using Google Cloud services. Each lab presents a set of the required tasks that you must complete with minimal assistance. The labs in this course have replaced the previous L300 Data Analytics Challenge Lab. If you have already completed the Challenge Lab as part of your L300 accreditation requirement, it will be carried over and count towards your L300 status. You must score 80% or higher for each lab to complete this course, and fulfill your CEPF L300 Data Analytics requirement. For technical issues with a Challenge Lab, please raise a Buganizer ticket using this CEPF Buganizer template: go/cepfl300labsupport

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This Infrastructure Modernization course consists of a series of advanced-level labs designed to validate your proficiency in modernizing a customer's IT infrastructure using Google Cloud. Each lab presents a set of the required tasks that you must complete with minimal assistance. The labs in this course have replaced the previous L300 Infrastructure Modernization Challenge Lab. If you have already completed the Challenge Lab as part of your L300 accreditation requirement, it will be carried over and count towards your L300 status. You must score 80% or higher for each lab to complete this course, and fulfill your CEPF L300 Infrastructure Modernization requirement. For technical issues with a Challenge Lab, please raise a Buganizer ticket using this CEPF Buganizer template: go/cepfl300labsupport

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This Databases course consists of a series of advanced-level labs designed to validate your proficiency in migrating and managing Google Cloud databases. Each lab presents a set of the required tasks that you must complete with minimal assistance. The labs in this course have replaced the previous L300 Data Management Challenge Lab. If you have already completed the Challenge Lab as part of your L300 accreditation requirement, it will be carried over and count towards your L300 status. You must score 80% or higher for each lab to complete this course, and fulfill your CEPF L300 Database requirement. For technical issues with a Challenge Lab, please raise a Buganizer ticket using this CEPF Buganizer template: go/cepfl300labsupport

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Complete the introductory Create and Manage AlloyDB Instances skill badge to demonstrate skills in the following: performing core AlloyDB operations and tasks, migrating to AlloyDB from PostgreSQL, administering an AlloyDB database, and accelerating analytical queries using the AlloyDB Columnar Engine.

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This is an introductory level micro-learning course that explores what large language models (LLM) are, the use cases where they can be utilized, and how you can use prompt tuning to enhance LLM performance. It also covers Google tools to help you develop your own Gen AI apps.

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Earn a skill badge by completing the Introduction to Generative AI, Introduction to Large Language Models and Introduction to Responsible AI courses. By passing the final quiz, you'll demonstrate your understanding of foundational concepts in generative AI. A skill badge is a digital badge issued by Google Cloud in recognition of your knowledge of Google Cloud products and services. Share your skill badge by making your profile public and adding it to your social media profile.

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Welcome to the TechCon Lab Bash 2022 hands-on lab event! Below, you are presented with a series of labs ranging from Level 100 to Level 400. Level 100 labs are video walkthroughs of the lab content. Level 200 labs are traditional Learning Labs which provide you with step-by-step instructions. Level 300 are Challenge Labs which provide you with limited instructions and a hands-on technical scenario to solve. Level 400 are break/fix labs where you must identify the issues in the environment and resolve them.

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Cloud SQL is a fully managed database service that stands out from its peers due to high performance, seamless integration, and impressive scalability. In this quest you will receive hands-on practice with the basics of Cloud SQL and quickly progress to advanced features, which you will apply to production frameworks and application environments. From creating instances and querying data with SQL, to building Deployment Manager scripts and connecting Cloud SQL instances with applications run on GKE containers, this quest will give you the knowledge and experience needed so you can start integrating this service right away.

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Complete the introductory Prepare Data for ML APIs on Google Cloud skill badge to demonstrate skills in the following: cleaning data with Dataprep by Trifacta, running data pipelines in Dataflow, creating clusters and running Apache Spark jobs in Dataproc, and calling ML APIs including the Cloud Natural Language API, Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API, and Video Intelligence API.

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Big data, machine learning, and artificial intelligence are today’s hot computing topics, but these fields are quite specialized and introductory material is hard to come by. Fortunately, Google Cloud provides user-friendly services in these areas, and with this introductory-level quest, so you can take your first steps with tools like Big Query, Cloud Speech API and Video Intelligence. Want extra help? 1-minute videos walk you through key concepts for each lab.

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Complete the intermediate Implement Cloud Security Fundamentals on Google Cloud skill badge course to demonstrate skills in the following: creating and assigning roles with Identity and Access Management (IAM); creating and managing service accounts; enabling private connectivity across virtual private cloud (VPC) networks; restricting application access using Identity-Aware Proxy; managing keys and encrypted data using Cloud Key Management Service (KMS); and creating a private Kubernetes cluster.

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Complete the intermediate Implement DevOps Workflows in Google Cloud skill badge to demonstrate skills in the following: creating git repositories with Cloud Source Repositories, launching, managing, and scaling deployments on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), and architecting CI/CD pipelines that automate container image builds and deployments to GKE. A skill badge is an exclusive digital badge issued by Google Cloud in recognition of your proficiency with Google Cloud products and services and tests your ability to apply your knowledge in an interactive hands-on environment. Complete this skill badge course and the final assessment challenge lab to receive a skill badge that you can share with your network.

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Complete the introductory Monitor and Log with Google Cloud Observability skill badge to demonstrate skills in the following: monitoring virtual machines in Compute Engine, utilizing Cloud Monitoring for multi-project oversight, extending monitoring and logging capabilities to Cloud Functions, creating and sending custom application metrics, and configuring Cloud Monitoring alerts based on custom metrics. A skill badge is an exclusive digital badge issued by Google Cloud in recognition of your proficiency with Google Cloud products and services and tests your ability to apply your knowledge in an interactive hands-on environment. Complete this skill badge course and the final assessment challenge lab to receive a skill badge that you can share with your network.

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Complete the intermediate Engineer Data for Predictive Modeling with BigQuery ML skill badge to demonstrate skills in the following: building data transformation pipelines to BigQuery using Dataprep by Trifacta; using Cloud Storage, Dataflow, and BigQuery to build extract, transform, and load (ETL) workflows; and building machine learning models using BigQuery ML. A skill badge is an exclusive digital badge issued by Google Cloud in recognition of your proficiency with Google Cloud products and services and tests your ability to apply your knowledge in an interactive hands-on environment. Complete the skill badge course, and final assessment challenge lab, to receive a digital badge that you can share with your network.

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Complete the intermediate Build a Data Warehouse with BigQuery skill badge to demonstrate skills in the following: joining data to create new tables, troubleshooting joins, appending data with unions, creating date-partitioned tables, and working with JSON, arrays, and structs in BigQuery. A skill badge is an exclusive digital badge issued by Google Cloud in recognition of your proficiency with Google Cloud products and services and tests your ability to apply your knowledge in an interactive hands-on environment. Complete the skill badge course, and final assessment challenge lab, to receive a digital badge that you can share with your network.

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Obtain a competitive advantage through DevOps. DevOps is an organizational and cultural movement that aims to increase software delivery velocity, improve service reliability, and build shared ownership among software stakeholders. In this course you will learn how to use Google Cloud to improve the speed, stability, availability, and security of your software delivery capability. DevOps Research and Assessment has joined Google Cloud. How does your team measure up? Take this five question multiple-choice quiz and find out!

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Looking to build or optimize your data warehouse? Learn best practices to Extract, Transform, and Load your data into Google Cloud with BigQuery. In this series of interactive labs you will create and optimize your own data warehouse using a variety of large-scale BigQuery public datasets. BigQuery is Google's fully managed, NoOps, low cost analytics database. With BigQuery you can query terabytes and terabytes of data without having any infrastructure to manage or needing a database administrator. BigQuery uses SQL and can take advantage of the pay-as-you-go model. BigQuery allows you to focus on analyzing data to find meaningful insights. Looking for a hands on challenge lab to demonstrate your skills and validate your knowledge? On completing this quest, enroll in and finish the additional challenge lab at the end of this quest to receive an exclusive Google Cloud digital badge.

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Want to learn the core SQL and visualization skills of a Data Analyst? Interested in how to write queries that scale to petabyte-size datasets? Take the BigQuery for Analyst Quest and learn how to query, ingest, optimize, visualize, and even build machine learning models in SQL inside of BigQuery.

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In this Quest, the experienced user of Google Cloud will learn how to describe and launch cloud resources with Terraform, an open source tool that codifies APIs into declarative configuration files that can be shared amongst team members, treated as code, edited, reviewed, and versioned. In these nine hands-on labs, you will work with example templates and understand how to launch a range of configurations, from simple servers, through full load-balanced applications.

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Learn the ins and outs of Google Cloud's operations suite, an important service for generating insights into the health of your applications. It provides a wealth of information in application monitoring, report logging, and diagnoses. These labs will give you hands-on practice with and will teach you how to monitor virtual machines, generate logs and alerts, and create custom metrics for application data. It is recommended that the students have at least earned a Badge by completing the Google Cloud Essentials. Looking for a hands on challenge lab to demonstrate your skills and validate your knowledge? On completing this course, enroll in and finish the challenge lab at the end of the Monitor and Log with Google Cloud Operations Suite to receive an exclusive Google Cloud digital badge.

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This advanced-level quest is unique amongst the other catalog offerings. The labs have been curated to give IT professionals hands-on practice with topics and services that appear in the Google Cloud Certified Professional Data Engineer Certification. From Big Query, to Dataprep, to Cloud Composer, this quest is composed of specific labs that will put your Google Cloud data engineering knowledge to the test. Be aware that while practice with these labs will increase your skills and abilities, you will need other preparation, too. The exam is quite challenging and external studying, experience, and/or background in cloud data engineering is recommended. Looking for a hands on challenge lab to demonstrate your skills and validate your knowledge? On completing this quest, enroll in and finish the additional challenge lab at the end of the Engineer Data in the Google Cloud to receive an exclusive Google Cloud digital badge.

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Earn a skill badge by completing the Build a Secure Google Cloud Network skill badge course, where you will learn about multiple networking-related resources to build, scale, and secure your applications on Google Cloud.

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Networking is a principle theme of cloud computing. It’s the underlying structure of Google Cloud, and it’s what connects all your resources and services to one another. This course will cover essential Google Cloud networking services and will give you hands-on practice with specialized tools for developing mature networks. From learning the ins-and-outs of VPCs, to creating enterprise-grade load balancers, Automate Deployment and Manage Traffic on a Google Cloud Network will give you the practical experience needed so you can start building robust networks right away.

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Security is an uncompromising feature of Google Cloud services, and Google Cloud has developed specific tools for ensuring safety and identity across your projects. In this fundamental-level quest, you will get hands-on practice with Google Cloud’s Identity and Access Management (IAM) service, which is the go-to for managing user and virtual machine accounts. You will get experience with network security by provisioning VPCs and VPNs, and learn what tools are available for security threat and data loss protections.

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Complete the introductory Derive Insights from BigQuery Data skill badge to demonstrate skills in the following: write SQL queries, query public tables, load sample data into BigQuery, troubleshoot common syntax errors with the query validator in BigQuery, and create reports in Looker Studio by connecting to BigQuery data. A skill badge is an exclusive digital badge issued by Google Cloud in recognition of your proficiency with Google Cloud products and services and tests your ability to apply your knowledge in an interactive hands-on environment. Complete this skill badge course, and the final assessment challenge lab, to receive a skill badge that you can share with your network.

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Want to scale your data analysis efforts without managing database hardware? Learn the best practices for querying and getting insights from your data warehouse with this interactive series of BigQuery labs. BigQuery is Google's fully managed, NoOps, low cost analytics database. With BigQuery you can query terabytes and terabytes of data without having any infrastructure to manage or needing a database administrator. BigQuery uses SQL and can take advantage of the pay-as-you-go model. BigQuery allows you to focus on analyzing data to find meaningful insights.

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Google Cloud’s four step structured Cloud Migration Path Methodology provides a defined and repeatable path for users to follow when migrating and modernizing Virtual Machines. In this quest, you will get hands-on practice with Google’s current solution set for VM assessment, planning, migration, and modernization. You will start by analyzing your lab environment and building assessment reports with CloudPhysics and StratoZone, then build a landing zone within Google Cloud leveraging Terraform’s infrastructure-as-code templates, next you will manually transform a two-tier application into a cloud-native workload running on Kubernetes, and finally, transform a VM workload into Kubernetes with Migrate for Anthos and migrate a VM between cloud environments.

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Complete the intermediate Deploy Kubernetes Applications on Google Cloud skill badge course to demonstrate skills in the following: Configuring and building Docker container images.Creating and managing Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) clusters.Utilizing kubectl for efficient cluster management.Deploying Kubernetes applications with robust continuous delivery (CD) practices.

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Complete the introductory Implementing Cloud Load Balancing for Compute Engine skill badge to demonstrate skills in the following: creating and deploying virtual machines in Compute Engine and configuring network and application load balancers.

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Earn a skill badge by completing the Develop your Google Cloud Network skill badge course, where you learn multiple ways to deploy and monitor applications including how to: explore IAM roles and add/remove project access, create VPC networks, deploy and monitor Compute Engine VMs, write SQL queries, deploy and monitor VMs in Compute Engine, and deploy applications using Kubernetes with multiple deployment approaches.

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Earn a skill badge by completing the Set Up a Google Cloud Network course, where you will learn how to perform basic networking tasks on Google Cloud Platform - create a custom network, add subnets firewall rules, then create VMs and test the latency when they communicate with each other. A skill badge is an exclusive digital badge issued by Google Cloud in recognition of your proficiency with Google Cloud products and services and tests your ability to apply your knowledge in an interactive hands-on environment. Complete the skill badge, and final assessment challenge lab, to receive a digital badge that you can share with your network.

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Earn a skill badge by completing the Cloud Architecture: Design, Implement, and Manage to demonstrate skills in the following: deploy a publicly accessible website using Apache web servers, configure a Compute Engine VM using startup scripts, configure secure RDP using a Windows Bastion host and firewall rules, build and deploy a Docker image to a Kubernetes cluster and then update it, and create a CloudSQL instance and import a MySQL database. This skill badge is a great resource for understanding topics that will appear in the Google Cloud Certified Professional Cloud Architect certification exam.

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For everyone using Google Cloud Platform for the first time, getting familar with gcloud, Google Cloud's command line, will help you get up to speed faster. In this quest, you'll learn how to install and configure Cloud SDK, then use gcloud to perform some basic operations like creating VMs, networks, using BigQuery, and using gsutil to perform operations.

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Earn a skill badge by completing the Set Up an App Dev Environment on Google Cloud course, where you learn how to build and connect storage-centric cloud infrastructure using the basic capabilities of the of the following technologies: Cloud Storage, Identity and Access Management, Cloud Functions, and Pub/Sub. A skill badge is an exclusive digital badge issued by Google Cloud in recognition of your proficiency with Google Cloud products and services and tests your ability to apply your knowledge in an interactive hands-on environment. Complete this skill badge, and the final assessment challenge lab, to receive a skill badge that you can share with your network.

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Kubernetes is the most popular container orchestration system, and Google Kubernetes Engine was designed specifically to support managed Kubernetes deployments in Google Cloud. In this course, you will get hands-on practice configuring Docker images, containers, and deploying fully-fledged Kubernetes Engine applications.

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In this introductory-level course, you get hands-on practice with the Google Cloud’s fundamental tools and services. Optional videos are provided to provide more context and review for the concepts covered in the labs. Google Cloud Essentials is a recommendeded first course for the Google Cloud learner - you can come in with little or no prior cloud knowledge, and come out with practical experience that you can apply to your first Google Cloud project. From writing Cloud Shell commands and deploying your first virtual machine, to running applications on Kubernetes Engine or with load balancing, Google Cloud Essentials is a prime introduction to the platform’s basic features.

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If you are a novice cloud developer looking for hands-on practice beyond Google Cloud Essentials, this course is for you. You will get practical experience through labs that dive into Cloud Storage and other key application services like Monitoring and Cloud Functions. You will develop valuable skills that are applicable to any Google Cloud initiative. 1-minute videos walk you through key concepts for these labs.

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This fundamental-level quest is unique amongst the other quest offerings. The labs have been curated to give IT professionals hands-on practice with topics and services that appear in the Google Cloud Certified Associate Cloud Engineer Certification. From IAM, to networking, to Kubernetes engine deployment, this quest is composed of specific labs that will put your Google Cloud knowledge to the test. Be aware that while practice with these labs will increase your skills and abilities, we recommend that you also review the exam guide and other available preparation resources.

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This fundamental-level quest is unique amongst the other quest offerings. The labs have been curated to give IT professionals hands-on practice with topics and services that appear in the Google Cloud Certified Professional Cloud Architect Certification. From IAM, to networking, to Kubernetes engine deployment, this quest is composed of specific labs that will put your Google Cloud knowledge to the test. Be aware that while practice with these labs will increase your skills and abilities, we recommend that you also review the exam guide and other available preparation resources.

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This quest of "Challenge Labs" gives the student preparing for the Google Cloud Certified Professional Cloud Architect certification hands-on practice with common business/technology solutions using Google Cloud architectures. Challenge Labs do not provide the "cookbook" steps, but require solutions to be built with minimal guidance, across many Google Cloud technologies. All labs have activity tracking, and in order to earn this badge you must score 100% in each lab. This quest is not easy and will put your Google Cloud technology skills to the test! Be aware that while practice with these labs will increase your knowledge and abilities, additional study, experience, and background in cloud architecture is recommended to prepare for this certification. Complete this quest to receive an exclusive Google Cloud digital badge.

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