Google PCA Manage implementation of cloud architecture Practice Test 5 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company is migrating a legacy application to Google Cloud. The application has a stateful TCP-based protocol that requires client IP persistence. They plan to use a load balancer. Which load balancer type should they choose?

Accepted Answer

External Network Load Balancer (passthrough). The External Network Load Balancer (passthrough) is the correct choice because it preserves the original client IP address via direct server return (DSR) and does not terminate the TCP connection. This is essential for stateful TCP-based protocols that require client IP persistence, as the backend instances see the actual client IP and can maintain session state.

Answer

External HTTP(S) Load Balancer

Answer

Internal TCP/UDP Load Balancer

Answer

External TCP Proxy Load Balancer

Question 2

Which TWO of the following are valid methods to securely access Google Cloud APIs from a Compute Engine instance without managing service account keys?

Accepted Answer

Attach a custom service account to the instance using the gcloud command. The default service account and attaching a custom service account to the instance both provide access via metadata server, no key management. Using a service account key file (B) requires key management. Using Cloud KMS (D) is for encrypting keys, not accessing APIs. IAM roles (E) are permissions, not method of access.

Answer

Download a service account key file and store it on the instance

Answer

Grant the appropriate IAM roles to the instance's service account

Answer

Use a Cloud KMS key to generate temporary credentials

Question 3

Which THREE of the following are recommended practices when designing a highly available architecture on Google Cloud using multiple regions?

Accepted Answer

Use a global external HTTP(S) load balancer with backend services in multiple regions. Option B is correct because a global external HTTP(S) load balancer uses Google's global anycast IP and routes traffic to the closest healthy backend in any region, enabling cross-region failover and low latency. It automatically handles failover between regions when health checks detect backend failures, making it a core component of multi-region high availability.

Answer

Deploy Compute Engine instances in a single regional managed instance group

Answer

Use a single Cloud VPN tunnel for connectivity between regions

Question 4

Which TWO of the following are benefits of using a VPC Service Controls perimeter?

Accepted Answer

Prevent data exfiltration from managed services like BigQuery and Cloud Storage. VPC Service Controls perimeters prevent data exfiltration by creating a security boundary around Google Cloud managed services (e.g., BigQuery, Cloud Storage). Within the perimeter, data can only be copied to other resources inside the same perimeter, blocking unauthorized transfers to external projects or the internet. This is achieved through context-aware access policies that enforce data access based on the client's network identity and project membership, not by inspecting packet contents.

Answer

Act as a network firewall for Compute Engine instances

Answer

Provide encryption of data in transit between on-premises and Google Cloud

Answer

Replace Identity and Access Management (IAM) for service access control

Question 5

A company is migrating a monolithic application to Google Cloud and wants to minimize operational overhead for scaling. Which service should they use?

Accepted Answer

App Engine Standard. App Engine Standard is the correct choice because it provides a fully managed, autoscaling platform that abstracts away all infrastructure management, including server configuration, scaling, and load balancing. This minimizes operational overhead for scaling a monolithic application by automatically adjusting resources based on traffic without any manual intervention or cluster management.

Answer

Google Kubernetes Engine

Answer

Cloud Run

Answer

Compute Engine with managed instance groups

Question 6

A developer needs to deploy a stateful application that requires persistent storage across pod restarts in Google Kubernetes Engine. Which resource should they use?

Accepted Answer

PersistentVolumeClaim. A PersistentVolumeClaim (PVC) is the correct resource because it allows a pod to request persistent storage that survives pod restarts. In GKE, a PVC binds to a PersistentVolume (PV), which can be backed by Compute Engine persistent disks, ensuring data remains available even if the pod is rescheduled or restarted.

Answer

ConfigMap

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EmptyDir

Answer

Secret

Question 7

A company stores sensitive data in Cloud Storage and wants to enforce encryption at rest using customer-managed keys. Which Google Cloud service should they use to manage the keys?

Accepted Answer

Cloud KMS. Cloud KMS (Key Management Service) is the correct choice because it is the native Google Cloud service for managing cryptographic keys, including customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK). It allows you to create, rotate, and control access to keys used to encrypt data at rest in Cloud Storage, and it integrates directly with Cloud Storage's CMEK feature. Cloud HSM is a hardware-backed key management option but is built on top of Cloud KMS, not a separate service for key management.

Answer

Cloud HSM

Answer

Secret Manager

Answer

IAM

Question 8

A company is using Cloud Load Balancing with backend services across multiple regions. They notice that traffic is not being evenly distributed and some backends are overloaded. Which configuration should they check?

Accepted Answer

Session affinity settings. Session affinity (sticky sessions) directs all requests from a single client to the same backend instance. If enabled, this can cause uneven load distribution because certain clients may generate disproportionately more traffic, overloading their pinned backends while others remain underutilized. Disabling or properly configuring session affinity allows the load balancer to distribute requests based on its default algorithm (e.g., round-robin or least-connections), improving balance across backends.

Answer

Firewall rules

Answer

Cloud CDN caching

Answer

Health check frequency

Question 9

A team is designing a multi-tier web application on Compute Engine. They need to ensure that only the web tier can access the application tier over a specific port. They plan to use VPC firewall rules. Which approach minimizes the attack surface?

Accepted Answer

Allow ingress from the web tier's instances' service accounts to the application tier's instances. Option A is correct because it uses service account-based firewall rules, which allow you to specify the source as the service account attached to the web tier's instances rather than their IP addresses or subnets. This ensures that only instances with that specific service account (i.e., the web tier) can reach the application tier on the designated port, regardless of their IP or subnet. By scoping access to a specific identity, you minimize the attack surface because no other instances, even those in the same subnet, can reach the application tier unless they also use that service account.

Answer

Allow ingress from any source to the application tier on the port

Answer

Allow ingress from the web tier's subnet to the application tier's instances on the port

Answer

Allow egress from the web tier to the application tier

Question 10

A company is using Cloud SQL for MySQL and wants to implement automated backups that are retained for 30 days. They also need point-in-time recovery. Which configuration should they use?

Accepted Answer

Enable automated backups with binary logging. Cloud SQL for MySQL requires automated backups to be enabled along with binary logging to support point-in-time recovery (PITR). Binary logs record all changes to the database, allowing you to restore to any specific timestamp within the backup retention period. Setting the retention to 30 days ensures backups are kept for the required duration, and binary logging enables the granular recovery needed for PITR.

Answer

Enable database replication

Answer

Use Cloud Storage versioning

Answer

Enable automated backups and set backup retention to 30

Question 11

A company runs a critical application on Compute Engine with a stateful workload. They want to achieve 99.99% availability within a single region. Which architecture should they recommend?

Accepted Answer

Two instances in different zones with a regional persistent disk attached to the active instance and failover using a load balancer. Option C is correct because it uses a regional persistent disk, which synchronously replicates data across two zones within the same region, ensuring data durability and availability. The active instance in one zone attaches the disk, and a load balancer with health checks detects failures and redirects traffic to the standby instance in the other zone, enabling automatic failover to meet the 99.99% availability target.

Answer

Two instances in different zones with a zonal persistent disk each and data replication using a custom script

Answer

One instance in a single zone with a persistent disk snapshot every hour

Answer

Four instances across two zones with a regional persistent disk and active-passive failover using a health check

Question 12

A large enterprise is migrating their on-premises data center to Google Cloud. They have hundreds of VMs and need to minimize network latency between on-prem and cloud during migration. They have high bandwidth requirements. Which connectivity solution should they use?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Interconnect. Cloud Interconnect provides a dedicated, high-bandwidth, low-latency connection between on-premises data centers and Google Cloud, bypassing the public internet. This is ideal for large-scale migrations with hundreds of VMs where minimizing latency and ensuring consistent throughput is critical.

Answer

Cloud VPN

Answer

Cloud NAT

Answer

Peering with Google

Question 13

A company is using Cloud Armor to protect their external HTTPS load balancer. They want to block traffic from a specific list of IP ranges. They create a security policy with a deny rule. However, the denials seem not to be applied to all backend services. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The security policy is attached to the load balancer's target proxy, but the deny rule priority is lower than an allow rule. Cloud Armor security policies are evaluated against the rules in priority order, with lower numbers having higher priority. If a deny rule has a higher priority number (lower priority) than an allow rule, the allow rule will be evaluated first and permit the traffic, effectively overriding the deny. The most likely cause is that the deny rule's priority is not set lower than any conflicting allow rules, so the allow rule matches first.

Answer

The security policy is not attached to the backend service

Answer

Cloud Armor policies only apply to global load balancers, not regional

Answer

The security policy has an allow rule that overrides the deny rule

Question 14

A company is deploying a web application on Compute Engine. They want to automatically scale the number of instances based on CPU utilization. Which two components are required to set up autoscaling? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Instance template. An instance template is required because it defines the machine configuration (machine type, boot disk image, network tags, etc.) for all VMs created by the autoscaler. Without a template, the managed instance group would have no blueprint to provision new instances when scaling out.

Answer

Cloud Functions

Answer

Cloud Load Balancing

Answer

Cloud Monitoring

Question 15

A company is designing a disaster recovery plan for their Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL instance. They want to ensure that the database can be recovered in another region within minutes with minimal data loss. Which three actions should they take? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

Enable point-in-time recovery. Enabling point-in-time recovery (PITR) for Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL is correct because it allows you to restore the database to any specific point in time within the backup retention period, minimizing data loss to within seconds. PITR relies on write-ahead logs (WAL) archived continuously, which are essential for recovering to a precise timestamp in a disaster scenario. This directly supports the requirement of minimal data loss during cross-region recovery.

Answer

Configure a failover replica in a different zone within the same region

Answer

Enable automated backups with a retention period of 30 days