Cloud Digital Leader Practice Test 4 — 10 Questions

Question 1

What is the key difference between a virtual machine (VM) and a container in terms of how they package and run applications?

Accepted Answer

VMs include a full guest OS; containers share the host OS kernel and contain only the application and its dependencies.. The key difference is that a virtual machine (VM) includes a full guest operating system (OS) running on top of a hypervisor, which virtualizes the underlying hardware. In contrast, a container packages only the application and its dependencies (libraries, binaries, configuration files) and shares the host OS kernel via the container runtime (e.g., Docker, containerd). This makes containers lightweight and faster to start, as they avoid the overhead of a separate OS instance.

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VMs run on physical hardware; containers run in the cloud.

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Containers are less secure than VMs because they share hardware.

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VMs are only for Linux applications; containers support all operating systems.

Question 2

A security architect wants to implement a 'never trust, always verify' security approach where no user or service is assumed to be trustworthy based on network location alone. Every access request must be authenticated and authorized regardless of whether it comes from inside or outside the corporate network. Which security model describes this approach?

Accepted Answer

Zero Trust security model. The Zero Trust security model (Option B) is correct because it explicitly enforces the 'never trust, always verify' principle, requiring authentication and authorization for every access request regardless of network location. In Google Cloud, this aligns with BeyondCorp, which uses identity-aware proxy (IAP) and context-aware access to verify each request based on user identity, device posture, and other attributes, rather than trusting based on IP address or network perimeter.

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Perimeter security model

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Defense in depth model

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Principle of least privilege

Question 3

A company wants to migrate its existing on-premises virtual machines (VMware VMs) to Google Cloud with minimal changes to the operating system and applications. Which Google Cloud product is specifically designed for migrating on-premises VMs to Google Cloud with minimal modification?

Accepted Answer

Migrate to Virtual Machines (formerly Velostrata), which migrates on-premises VMware VMs to Compute Engine with minimal modification and downtime. Migrate to Virtual Machines (formerly Velostrata) is the correct choice because it is specifically designed to migrate on-premises VMware VMs to Compute Engine with minimal modification to the OS and applications. It uses a streaming migration approach that moves the VM's disk state incrementally while keeping the VM running, resulting in minimal downtime and no need to re-architect the workloads.

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Cloud Dataflow, by streaming data from on-premises VMs to Google Cloud storage

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Anthos, by registering on-premises Kubernetes clusters with Google Cloud's management plane

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Cloud Storage Transfer Service, by copying VM disk images from on-premises storage to Cloud Storage

Question 4

A company has a requirement from their security auditor to demonstrate that all administrative actions performed in Google Cloud (such as creating VMs, modifying IAM policies, and deleting storage buckets) are logged and tamper-evident. Which Cloud Logging log type fulfills this requirement?

Accepted Answer

Admin Activity audit logs — always-on, tamper-resistant logs of all administrative API calls.. Admin Activity audit logs are always-on, tamper-resistant logs that record all administrative API calls, such as creating VMs, modifying IAM policies, and deleting storage buckets. They cannot be disabled or modified by users, ensuring tamper-evident logging for security auditor requirements.

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Data Access audit logs — they capture all read and write operations.

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System Event audit logs — they capture all Google Cloud operations.

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Cloud Monitoring logs — they track all changes to monitored resources.

Question 5

A company's production database is running on a Compute Engine VM with a 500 GB Persistent Disk. The operations team wants to create a backup they can restore from in case of data corruption or accidental deletion. Which Google Cloud capability provides point-in-time backup for Persistent Disks?

Accepted Answer

Persistent Disk Snapshots, which capture the disk state at a point in time and enable restoration or creation of new disks from that snapshot. Persistent Disk Snapshots are the correct Google Cloud feature for creating point-in-time backups of Persistent Disks. They capture the disk's data and configuration at a specific moment, allowing you to restore the disk or create new disks from that snapshot. This is the native, recommended method for backup and disaster recovery of Compute Engine VM disks.

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Cloud Storage bucket replication, by continuously copying the database files to a storage bucket

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Cloud SQL automated backups, which protect databases running on Compute Engine VMs

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VM live migration, which moves the running VM between physical hosts, automatically creating a backup in the process

Question 6

A startup is building a web application and wants to protect it from common web attacks like SQL injection and cross-site scripting. Which Google Cloud product provides web application firewall (WAF) capabilities?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Armor, which provides WAF rules to detect and block SQL injection, XSS, and other OWASP Top 10 attacks. Cloud Armor is Google Cloud's web application firewall (WAF) service that provides pre-configured rules to detect and block common web attacks, including SQL injection and cross-site scripting (XSS), as well as other OWASP Top 10 threats. It integrates with Cloud Load Balancing and allows you to create custom security policies with rate limiting, IP allow/deny lists, and managed rule sets. This makes it the correct choice for protecting a web application at the application layer.

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Cloud Firewall, which controls network-level traffic based on IP and port rules

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VPC Service Controls, which prevent data exfiltration from Google Cloud services

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Security Command Center, which detects security misconfigurations across Google Cloud resources

Question 7

A product team is discussing how to handle a planned 48-hour maintenance window for a critical customer-facing service. The SRE team argues the maintenance window is unnecessary with proper cloud architecture. Which cloud capability eliminates the need for planned downtime maintenance windows?

Accepted Answer

Zero-downtime deployment strategies like rolling updates and blue/green deployments, combined with cloud live migration for infrastructure maintenance. Cloud platforms like Google Cloud support zero-downtime deployment strategies (rolling updates, blue/green deployments) and live migration for infrastructure maintenance. Live migration transparently moves running VMs between hosts without interrupting the OS or applications, while blue/green deployments allow traffic to be switched to a fully updated environment before the old one is taken down. Together, these capabilities eliminate the need for planned downtime maintenance windows entirely.

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Longer maintenance windows scheduled during off-peak hours to minimize customer impact

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Notifying customers in advance of the maintenance window and offering service credits for the downtime

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Backing up all data before the maintenance window to ensure recovery if something goes wrong

Question 8

A Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) in Google Cloud provides network isolation. What does 'network isolation' mean in this context, and why is it important?

Accepted Answer

VPC provides a logically isolated private network where resources are separated from other customers' networks by default, preventing unauthorized cross-customer traffic.. A Google Cloud VPC provides a logically isolated private network within the shared Google Cloud infrastructure. This isolation ensures that resources in one customer's VPC cannot directly communicate with resources in another customer's VPC by default, preventing unauthorized cross-customer traffic. This is achieved through software-defined networking (SDN) constructs like virtual firewalls and routing tables, not through physical separation.

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Network isolation means the VPC blocks all internet access — resources cannot communicate with external services.

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Network isolation means all traffic within the VPC is automatically encrypted.

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A VPC requires dedicated physical hardware separate from other customers to ensure isolation.

Question 9

A data analyst at a media company needs to run complex SQL queries on petabytes of user engagement data to produce weekly reports. The dataset is stored in Google Cloud. Which Google Cloud product is purpose-built for this type of large-scale analytical SQL workload?

Accepted Answer

BigQuery, Google Cloud's serverless data warehouse for petabyte-scale analytical SQL. BigQuery is Google Cloud's serverless, highly scalable data warehouse specifically designed for petabyte-scale analytical SQL queries. It separates compute from storage and uses a columnar storage format and a distributed query engine to execute complex SQL on massive datasets without provisioning infrastructure, making it the ideal choice for the described workload.

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Cloud SQL, Google Cloud's managed relational database service

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Cloud Bigtable, Google's NoSQL wide-column database

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Firestore, Google Cloud's serverless NoSQL document database

Question 10

A company wants to enable its developers to write and run code in various programming languages (Python, Node.js, Go) without provisioning or managing any servers. The code should execute in response to HTTP requests. Which Google Cloud product is designed for this serverless, function-level execution model?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Functions, which executes code functions in response to events or HTTP requests with no server management required. Cloud Functions is the correct choice because it is Google Cloud's event-driven, serverless compute platform that allows developers to write and deploy single-purpose functions in languages like Python, Node.js, and Go. These functions automatically scale and execute in response to HTTP triggers (e.g., HTTP requests) without any server provisioning or management, directly matching the requirement for a function-level execution model.

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Compute Engine, which provides virtual machines for running code in any language

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Cloud SQL, which runs SQL queries in response to HTTP requests

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Persistent Disk, which stores code that can be executed on demand