Unit 1 roadmap — Setting up a cloud solution environment

Every objective below is quoted from Google's Associate Cloud Engineer exam guide, retrieved 2026-09-22. Under each topic is that topic's own summary of what the exam actually tests, taken from its lecture.

Topic 1 — Setting up cloud projects and accounts

ACE-U1.T1 · 7 objectives · lecture deck of 16 slides

1. Creating a resource hierarchy
2. Applying organizational policies to the resource hierarchy
3. Granting members IAM roles within a project
4. Managing users and groups in Cloud Identity (manually and automated)
5. Enabling APIs within projects
6. Provisioning and setting up products in Google Cloud’s operations suite
7. Assessing quotas and requesting increases

What this topic actually tests. Where does it attach? a role or a policy on a folder reaches every project inside it. Who or what? IAM grants who; Organization Policy restricts what. Which identity path? Admin console by hand, GCDS from a directory — one way, no passwords. Which limit? a quota can be raised; a system limit cannot.

Topic 2 — Managing billing configuration

ACE-U1.T2 · 4 objectives · lecture deck of 14 slides

1. Creating one or more billing accounts
2. Linking projects to a billing account
3. Establishing billing budgets and alerts
4. Setting up billing exports

What this topic actually tests. Create: one currency per account, Billing Account Creator on the organization, close but never delete. Link: exactly one account per project, a role on EACH side, a closed account switches billing off. Budget: thresholds on actual or forecast, alerts never cap, Pub/Sub if something must happen. Export: BigQuery, same billing account, turn it on early — only multi-region cost data back-fills.