PCNE Cloud NAT Practice Question
A company has a VPC with subnets in us-central1 and europe-west1. They want to deploy a Cloud NAT to allow VMs in both regions to access the internet. How many Cloud NAT gateways are needed?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often mistakenly believe Cloud NAT is global or per-subnet. Remember: Cloud NAT is regional and one gateway covers all subnets in a region.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Two Cloud NAT gateways, one per region.
Cloud NAT is a regional resource; each region requires its own Cloud NAT gateway. A single gateway cannot cover multiple regions because Cloud NAT does not support global scope. For VMs in us-central1 and europe-west1 to access the internet, you need one Cloud NAT gateway per region, totaling two. Therefore, option C is correct. Option A is incorrect because Cloud NAT is necessary for private VMs to reach the internet without external IP addresses. Option B is incorrect because Cloud NAT operates at the region level, not per subnet; a regional gateway serves all subnets in that region. Option D is incorrect because Cloud NAT is regional, not global.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
None; Cloud NAT is not required for internet access.
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect. Cloud NAT is required for private VMs without external IPs to access the internet. Without it, they would have no outbound connectivity.
- ✗
One Cloud NAT gateway per subnet.
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect. Cloud NAT is regional, not per subnet. A single regional gateway serves all subnets within that region.
- ✓
Two Cloud NAT gateways, one per region.
Why this is correct
Correct. One Cloud NAT gateway is needed per region (us-central1 and europe-west1), so two gateways are required.
- ✗
One Cloud NAT gateway covering both regions.
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect. Cloud NAT is regional, not global, so a single gateway cannot cover both regions.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This PCNE practice question is part of Courseiva's free Google Cloud certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the PCNE exam.