PCNE Practice Question: Designing, planning, and prototyping a GCP network
This PCNE practice question tests your understanding of designing, planning, and prototyping a gcp network. Read the scenario carefully and evaluate each option against the stated constraints before committing to an answer. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
A company is designing a hybrid network architecture to connect their on-premises data center to Google Cloud. They need high availability and bandwidth up to 10 Gbps. Which connectivity option should they choose?
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Partner Interconnect with redundant connections
Option D is correct because the requirement for high availability (redundancy) and bandwidth up to 10 Gbps is best met by Partner Interconnect with redundant connections. Partner Interconnect supports bandwidths from 50 Mbps to 10 Gbps and allows you to connect through a supported service provider, while redundant connections ensure failover and meet the high-availability requirement. Dedicated Interconnect offers up to 10 Gbps per circuit but requires two separate connections for high availability, not a single connection.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
✗
VPN with Cloud Router
Why it's wrong here
VPN typically supports lower bandwidth and may not meet the 10 Gbps requirement.
✗
Direct Peering
Why it's wrong here
Direct Peering does not offer SLA or guaranteed bandwidth and is not recommended for hybrid connectivity.
✗
Dedicated Interconnect with a single connection
Why it's wrong here
A single connection does not provide high availability.
✓
Partner Interconnect with redundant connections
Why this is correct
Partner Interconnect supports up to 10 Gbps and can be deployed with redundant connections for high availability.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates often confuse 'Dedicated Interconnect with a single connection' as sufficient for high availability, but Cisco tests that a single physical circuit is a single point of failure, and high availability requires at least two redundant connections, which is explicitly supported by Partner Interconnect with redundant connections as the correct choice.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Partner Interconnect uses a VLAN attachment over a service provider's MPLS or Layer 2 network, allowing you to extend your on-premises network to Google Cloud without needing physical colocation. The redundant connections are typically terminated on different provider edge routers or diverse paths to avoid shared fate, and each connection can be configured with a separate Cloud Router for BGP sessions, enabling active-active or active-passive failover. Under the hood, the bandwidth is shaped at the provider edge, and Google enforces a maximum transmission unit (MTU) of 1460 bytes for Partner Interconnect, which can impact jumbo frame configurations.
KKey Concepts to Remember
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Find the constraint that changes the correct option.
Eliminate answers that are true in general but not in this case.
TExam Day Tips
→Watch for words such as best, first, most likely and least administrative effort.
→Review why wrong options are wrong, not only why the correct option is correct.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
How this comes up in practice
An e-commerce site experiences heavy traffic on Black Friday and near-zero traffic during off-peak weeks. Rather than provisioning permanent large VMs, the team uses auto-scaling groups that add capacity automatically under load and reduce it overnight. Questions like this test whether you understand elasticity, availability zones, and cloud compute scaling patterns.
What to study next
Got this wrong? Here's your next step.
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
Designing, planning, and prototyping a GCP network — This question tests Designing, planning, and prototyping a GCP network — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Partner Interconnect with redundant connections — Option D is correct because the requirement for high availability (redundancy) and bandwidth up to 10 Gbps is best met by Partner Interconnect with redundant connections. Partner Interconnect supports bandwidths from 50 Mbps to 10 Gbps and allows you to connect through a supported service provider, while redundant connections ensure failover and meet the high-availability requirement. Dedicated Interconnect offers up to 10 Gbps per circuit but requires two separate connections for high availability, not a single connection.
What should I do if I get this PCNE question wrong?
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
What is the key concept behind this question?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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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.
Question Discussion
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