Google Cloud Certifications with Dario Cabianca

Dario Kabianka, a cloud enthusiast and principal architect, has recently published two books focused on Google Cloud Platform certifications. His approach combines theory and practice, emphasizing the importance of understanding how the technology works in real-world scenarios. Dario's goal is to provide readers with the tools, knowledge, and methodology to not only pass the exams but also be successful in their work. He believes that practical experience and infrastructure as code are crucial for understanding and implementing cloud solutions effectively. Dario's passion for learning and sharing knowledge drives him to help others succeed in the cloud industry. Hey guys, welcome to Road to Cloud podcast, your guide to grand strategy, imaginative solutions and creative implementations. In today's episode, we're talking to Dario Kabianka, principal architect, published author and cloud enthusiast. Dario is passionate about learning, sharing his knowledge about cloud computing and his techniques in successfully passing Google Cloud certification exams. Recently, Dario has published two books actually, and they both focus on Google Cloud Platform. They're called Google Cloud Platform Professional Cloud Network Engineer Certification Companion and Google Cloud Platform Professional Security Engineer Certification Companion. Hey, Dario, welcome to Road to Cloud. Good morning, Emil, and thank you for having me here. Yeah, I'm excited to get to know you a little bit better and tell our audience about who you are and what you're up to. So let's jump right in. Tell me, how did you actually begin and how did you actually think about writing books on certification exams? Yeah, I'm glad you asked this question. It all started actually in 2018. My manager was actually leading a large cloud transformation program as part of enterprise architecture, and one of the key drivers was upskilling the team, and the team was required to actually achieve three cloud certifications back in 2018 with one of the three CSPs, whether it be AWS or Google Cloud, Roger. So as I was preparing for the Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect certification, I actually started taking notes about the approach. I like to start really always from the exam guide, the official exam guide from the Google, right? That's the main table of contents, and as I learn, I like to actually take notes, you know, combining the right mix of theory and practice. You know, for me, the practical aspect is very important to understand how the technology works. Yeah, so that's your approach, right? There's one thing to theory, but how do you actually make that real? And I think that's what a lot of these training places miss, right? Yes, exactly. You know, and so I was thinking, you know, you can take the classes from, you know, Linux Academy, EcloGuru, Pluralsight, and so forth. But to me, you know, just running the labs with the cloud console was not enough, and plus I realized that the actual exam requires you to know, at the minimum, the CLI or the QA, you know, every CSP has their own, right? So I thought, I need to do something more than this, and I want to combine theory and practice with, in this specific case, with the G Cloud, because Google Cloud, of course, expects you to know G Cloud, right? Right. To rebuild your infrastructure. So I developed those notes, and, you know, some of my peers were preparing for the exam. I remember one of them actually waiting, you know, until September, October, Q3, Q4. We've got to finish the certification. Can I borrow your notes, Dario? He said, yeah, sure. And my friend actually liked them so much that not only he passed the exam, but also he told me, man, you should sell this stuff, right? So you saw an opportunity there, right? I saw an opportunity, for sure. Not only that, but also, you know, I've always been passionate about taking notes, you know, from the very early days in high school, middle school, high school. My professor of physics, you know, he actually was asking me questions about thermodynamics, I remember. He actually, you know, he got my notes, and he really liked them. Dario, this will help you in the future. You know, your approach is very methodical, very structured. I like it. You'll take advantage of this. It's great. And so I thought about doing this, you know. In addition to that, I also like a lot to write, you know, draw diagrams, infographics, and especially for a networking engineering exam, having a clear picture of a topology, understanding each infrastructure, networking components, whether they be firewall or, I don't know, routers, and VPC peering, and all that stuff. It's very important, right? So I thought, if I combine the right, you know, diagrams, infographics, visual learning with the practical aspects in the 4.0 G Cloud, and in the new book, by the way, the new book will have more than G Cloud. It will be actually code with Golang. I like a lot of Golang. You're talking about your second book, your security engineer certification? Yes, yes. And that security engineer will be actually... It's already in production. It will be published on Amazon and all the major booksellers in late June, early July. It's already on pre-sale, though. Yeah, I like that you're saying you want to focus on the practical approach, because a lot of these training places, training websites you mentioned, you know, Linux Academy, Cloud Guru, whatever. So we'll go through, you know, the portal or whatever and click around. But that's not really how the real world works, is it? Yeah, exactly. You know, in the real world, you would be, you know, you would be doing, you know, provision infrastructure using Terraform, likely, or, you know, the framework available by the CSP. In Google Cloud, you have Deployment Manager, or in Azure, you have ARM, you know, or in CloudFormation in the US, you know. But again, you would be very unlikely, very unlikely to deploy infrastructure, especially for stage and prod using the console. And also, the console changes very quickly. Every month, there's a new change in the UI, right? So it doesn't make a lot of sense to do this. But yeah, the CLI, the Common Line Interface and the SDK, the library will be available for you to do that programmatically, by the way, which actually supports the automation as well. Right. So, you know, we've touched on this a little bit. So you talked about, hey, you know, I like to take notes. It's very methodical. So would you say your approach kind of focuses on writing a recipe, if you will? Yes. You know, my recipe is as follows. You know, first of all, start from the exam guide from Google Cloud. Google Cloud publishes for each exam an exam guide that covers all the objectives of the exam. So I thought, why do I need to reinvent the wheel? Leverage that as your table of contents, right? Yeah, good point. So, and of course, and by the way, the table of contents is great. However, there are a few caveats there. You know, some topics are very broad. So my publisher told me, you cannot have 200 pages for a chapter. For example, in the network engineer exam, you know, implementing VPC, implementing virtual private cloud, right, there's a lot to cover, especially if you want to combine gcloud, real life examples, and the theory, right? So I realized that, for example, VPC service controls was very, very, very broad. And that caused me to have basically 200 pages. Of course, 200 pages for a chapter is way too much. So I chose to split it. Yeah, you're not going to be very successful with your readers there, are you? Right, I split that. I moved away VPC. And by the way, it makes total sense because VPC service controls and service perimeters and access context manager, all those costs are actually another topic that, you know, overlaps with security, right? Right. So it made total sense to do it. But still, I was able to map one-to-one each topic, each objective, and I was able to elaborate even more on those just to show the, you know, the benefits of this way to micro-segment your networks, your VPCs. Yeah, awesome. So, you know, I like how you were touching on theory is great, but you don't want to keep it just theory. And certifications are great, but, you know, certifications prove that you have certain types of knowledge, right? And I like how you're saying, hey, how do I make this more practical and how do I relate this to the real world with, you know, infrastructure as code, for example. Tell me a little bit more about why are you even doing this? I mean, I understand, you know, you enjoy learning. You, you know, have a very methodical way of taking notes. You're, you know, good at passing these exams. But why are you doing this? Well, I would say really, really two things. I've always been passionate about learning and sharing knowledge and helping other folks. You know, that actually started, as I mentioned, in my early days, middle school, high school, and college, of course. But really, you know, I try myself. You know, I started a long time ago with AWS and then Google Cloud and Azure. And I remember in 2019, actually, I did all five Google Cloud certifications. I realized that just study out of the, you know, the guide and you need some practical exams, you know, practical exam or exams. That is not enough. That will make you maybe pass the exam, but it will not make you successful at work. Yeah, exactly. And that's what I like about your approach. Like, yeah, great. Passing certification exams is one thing, but actually having the knowledge and knowing what you're talking about is a totally different thing, right? Exactly. So I really want to do something more than screenshots of the consoles or what I call click-offs, clicking on the buttons of the UI that changes anyway. I want to give the tools and the knowledge to my readers so that, you know, not only will they pass the exam, but also will have the understanding, the tools, the methodology, and the knowledge to be successful at work. In other words, when you start working as a network engineer with Google Cloud, you've got to know very quickly how to spin up, you know, a custom VPC, not a default. The default is like, you know, just for testing, you know. You've got to know how to set up your, you know, your firewall rules. You've got to know also if you are working as a network engineer, you've got to be able to advise your cloud architects on how to actually structure your resource hierarchy, you know, based upon your business drivers and so forth. You know, this is all knowledge that my book gets you started. My book will get you started understanding what are the things you need to ask, what are the questions you need to ask, and how do you start, how do you get started. And, of course, you build knowledge at work, but at least you will have an approach, viable, that will get you started and you can elaborate more, you can build on it. That's what my value adds. That's what actually the extra step that my book, you know, is proposing to give the readers. And as a bonus, you'll pass the exam if you study and if you read all the examples that I include. You know, it's not easy, by the way. The first book is about 500 pages. My security guide actually is about 582 pages, so about 600 pages. You need to read the whole thing to pass the exam. I know it's a lot, but, you know, no pain, no gain, right? Yeah, 100%, man. And my book covers one by one each and every topic with the right mix of theory and practice. But, again, as a takeaway, you want to know, you want to pass the exam as a bonus, and you want to have the tools and the knowledge to be successful at work as a network engineer or as a security engineer. That's the main takeaway for me. That's awesome. Yeah, I remember, you know, at one point I was certified in all three, AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud Platform. Google Cloud, I would say, was probably the most difficult out of the three. But, anyways, I like how you're relating this to the real world and how you're distinguishing your value add because, yeah, theory is great, clicking around the portal is great, but how do you make it real? Also, oh, sorry, can I add a couple of more things? Yeah. I also do like to include a lot of metaphors and analogy. Let me give you a couple of examples, okay? Oh, yeah. I was actually at the Heathrow Airport last year. I was traveling for work, you know, in London. And I, you know, call my attention to this thing, you know, you arrive, you land as an international traveler. Of course, there's a line for domestic EU travelers. There's a line for non-EU travelers, right? And then I noticed, I call my attention, okay, UK border, UK border, United Kingdom border, right? You know, and I thought, is that a real border or is it like a logical border? Because, I mean, I think about, somebody thinks about a country border like a physical border, separating two countries like a physical. But, no, and then I thought, well, it's actually, it's a logical border because it's in an airport, you know. You cannot have a physical border in a country airport with international, you know, intercontinental travelers, right? So, that is a great analogy on how to explain, for example, VPC service perimeters, right? VPC service perimeter is like a logical border for your projects, Google Cloud projects. Meaning, you can only consume services in that perimeter, which is a group of GCP projects. If you are coming from another ingress, accepted set of projects. Likewise, if I want to travel to the UK from the U.S., well, I'm okay because, you know, there are bilateral agreements. But, you know, some countries require a visa. Of course, you need a visa, right? The visa is basically your ingress to that perimeter, VPC service control. So, I brought that analogy into my books, a lot of analogies like that. Another example, you know, with the Google Cloud, you have a network tier. You have premium tier or standard tier. If you want to actually leverage the highly performant, the highly optimized Google Cloud backbone, you know, with extremely low latency, state-of-the-art, intercontinental, submarine cable, blah, blah, blah. You know, you should leverage the network tier. But, of course, the network tier is more expensive than standard tier. So, the same approach can be used, you know. If you want to travel, for example, in Italy, you can choose high-speed rail trains or just regional trains, right? They are cheaper than regional. They go, they do many stops, but they are cheaper, right? Or if you have a need to be from Milan to Rome in three hours, you probably want to spend a little more money, you know, and buy the high-speed train, right, the high-speed railway. And that is the same for network tier and standard tier in Google Cloud, you know. If you have a budget in mind, you probably want to consider standard tier for your connectivity across your resources. If you have, you know, high-speed, low-latency, you know, highly resilient fault-tolerant system, you know, that are very, very sensitive to, you know, downtime, you may want to consider the network tier. I bring a lot of examples like this, you know, and this is actually something that can really help understand and, you know, consolidate the knowledge, basically. Does that make sense? Yeah, it makes great sense, yeah. I think it's great that you're relating that to the real world, and you've got to make those choices, obviously, when you're designing an architecture or designing a network. It really depends on what you are aiming for and what you need. Sometimes you may need that high-speed rail, and other times you might not. Exactly. And I even took some pictures. I was in Florida last year, and it came to my mind. There was a big sign on, okay, only the guests of this property can access the amenities and the facilities, you know, and great. It's a great example of I am, you know, identity and access management allowed policy. If I am, you know, if I rented this property, I am allowed to use the pool. I am allowed to do this. I did not. Good point. You're right. In the new book, there's a picture of that property. Of course, I anonymized it, you know, and I showed this is actually the subject. This is the principle. This is the verb. You can use the pool, you know, and this is the object. The pool is the object, the resource you're allowed to use, you know, and stuff like that, you know. Yeah, that's awesome. Those are really great examples. Now, you know, I think we're running a little bit out of time here, but tell me, do you have any words of wisdom or any key points that we should take away? I would say be consistent and try to study a few pages every day. If you're really aiming at becoming a successful Google Cloud Network Engineer or security engineer, you know, there's quite a bit of content, but if you study and do it little by day, you will be successful. Also, I highly recommend to actually try out those examples in G Cloud and in the new book with Golang. Trying is very important. In fact, I deliberately intentionally chose to show some examples that failed. It doesn't make sense to just show you the happy path, right? Always work and do this, you know, it works. There are a few examples in the book where I show you it doesn't work and I explain to you why this code does not work. So if it works, great. If it doesn't work, I'll tell you why or I'll let you figure out why and give you some hints, and then I'll teach you how to fix it. So it's very important that you try out those examples. That will only consolidate your understanding and your knowledge and make it successful work. That's awesome. Thank you for that. As we wrap up, what would be the best place to get in touch with you if people want to learn more? Do you have LinkedIn, GitHub, or whatever else place where people get in touch? Yes, I can be – the easiest way is actually LinkedIn. If you look me up on LinkedIn or you Google me, LinkedIn will be the first social media shows up. And I'm also available on GitHub with the DAR10. That's my GitHub handle, DAR10. And also I'm available on X, formerly known as Twitter, Dario, D-A-R-I-O, says, S-A-Y-Z. Dario says on Twitter. Awesome. Well, I'll make sure to include those links when I post this up. Or better yet, or even on Amazon. You look me up on Amazon. There's an offer page on Amazon. If you want to follow me on Amazon, that would be great. Awesome. I'll make sure to include all those links. All right, Dario. Dario, author, learner, enthusiast, thank you for joining today. Thank you, Ramon, for having me. Have a great day. All right. Thank you. [♪ music playing ♪