PCCP - Professional Cloud Certified Professional study plan
PCCP · Give each week a clear focus.
8 weeks · About 7 hours per week
Designing and planning a cloud solution architecture
Map each of the six exam domains to its weight and list the specific solution-design decisions each one forces you to make
Decompose a reference three-tier web application into compute, storage, network, and identity components and justify each choice against at least two alternatives
Compare IaaS, containers, and serverless options on operational overhead, scaling behavior, and cost profile using a written decision table
Draft a high-level architecture for a hypothetical regulated workload that names its network segmentation, data residency, and identity boundaries
Your checkpoint
A one-page architecture decision record for the three-tier workload that states the chosen components, the rejected alternatives, and the trade-off rationale for each
Designing and planning a cloud solution architecture
Design a multi-region high-availability topology and identify every single point of failure it removes
Select storage classes and data lifecycle rules for a workload with mixed hot, warm, and archival access patterns
Size compute and database tiers from stated throughput and concurrency assumptions, showing the arithmetic
Evaluate migration strategies (rehost, replatform, refactor) for a legacy monolith and defend one recommendation
Your checkpoint
A capacity and resilience worksheet for a multi-region design that shows sizing math, failover behavior, and the storage lifecycle policy applied to each data class
Designing and planning a cloud solution architecture & Managing and provisioning a cloud solution infrastructure
Translate the week 2 design into infrastructure-as-code modules with parameterized environments
Provision networking, compute, and managed database resources declaratively and verify the resulting state matches the design
Configure autoscaling policies tied to concrete metrics and state the thresholds and cooldown values you chose
Document the provisioning workflow so a second engineer could reproduce the environment from scratch
Your checkpoint
A working infrastructure-as-code repository that stands up the design in two environments from the same modules, plus a README describing the deploy sequence
Managing and provisioning a cloud solution infrastructure & Designing for security and compliance
Implement least-privilege identity and access policies for each service in the architecture and remove wildcard permissions
Encrypt data in transit and at rest across every storage and database component, and record which key management approach you used
Place network controls (subnets, firewall rules, private endpoints) so that no data store is publicly reachable
Enable audit logging and centralize logs in a destination with restricted write access
Your checkpoint
A security configuration checklist, fully applied to the running environment, with each control marked implemented or explicitly deferred with a reason
Designing for security and compliance & Managing implementation and operations
Map the workload against a compliance framework's control categories and flag every gap
Set up monitoring, alerting, and dashboards for availability, latency, error rate, and saturation
Write runbooks for the three most likely incident types, including detection signal, triage steps, and rollback
Define a backup and restore procedure and confirm the restore actually works
Your checkpoint
An operations package containing the compliance gap register, an alert catalog with thresholds, three incident runbooks, and a successful restore test log
Managing implementation and operations & Analyzing and optimizing technical and business processes
Automate the build-and-release pipeline so that a code change reaches a staging environment without manual steps
Instrument the workload to attribute cost to each service and identify the top three spend drivers
Right-size at least two over-provisioned resources using observed utilization data
Establish service-level objectives with error budgets and state how each one is measured
Your checkpoint
A cost and performance report showing before-and-after utilization for the resized resources, the pipeline definition, and the SLO table with measurement method
Ensuring reliability and operational excellence & Analyzing and optimizing technical and business processes
Design a fault-injection test that removes a dependency and verify the system degrades gracefully
Codify the operational procedures from week 5 into automated checks that run on every deploy
Review the architecture for process bottlenecks and propose two simplifications that reduce toil
Update the architecture decision records to reflect everything changed since week 1
Your checkpoint
A chaos test report with observed behavior and remediation actions, plus a revised decision record set reflecting the current architecture
Designing and planning a cloud solution architecture & Designing for security and compliance & Ensuring reliability and operational excellence
Complete a timed full-length practice set and score each domain separately to expose weak areas
Re-derive the design rationale for the weakest two domains without consulting notes
Teach the multi-region and least-privilege designs aloud in under ten minutes each to test recall under pressure
Consolidate a one-page review sheet of decision heuristics you got wrong during practice
Your checkpoint
A scored practice exam breakdown by domain with a written remediation note for every missed question category
Milestones
Week 2: You can sketch a multi-region, highly available design on blank paper and justify each component choice and its rejected alternative without notes
Week 4: The provisioned environment passes your own security checklist with zero publicly reachable data stores and no wildcard permissions remaining
Week 5: You have restored from backup successfully and can walk through each runbook's triage steps from memory
Week 6: A code change flows from commit to staging automatically, and you can name your top three cost drivers with utilization evidence
Week 7: A fault-injection test produced graceful degradation rather than an outage, and the findings are folded back into the runbooks
Week 8: Practice scores show no domain below 70 percent, and your weakest domain has improved measurably between two attempts