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Question 101
Your organization is deploying a high-security microservice platform on GKE across three regions. Compliance requires encrypted service-to-service communication with automatic certificate rotation, cryptographic workload identities, zero-trust access enforcement, and full request-level telemetry. The solution must also provide traffic shaping features including weighted routing, canary releases, circuit breaking, and retries. No application code modifications are allowed. Which Google Cloud service meets all of these requirements?
A) Cloud Router with firewall rules
B) Anthos Service Mesh
C) Cloud NAT with Private Google Access
D) Regional Internal HTTP(S) Load Balancer
Answer:
B
Explanation:
The correct answer is Anthos Service Mesh because it is the only Google Cloud technology designed to deliver comprehensive service-to-service security, identity, encryption, observability, and traffic management without requiring any application code modification. When organizations deploy microservices across multiple GKE clusters, they face challenges involving authentication, secure communication, performance reliability, and monitoring. Anthos Service Mesh solves these challenges by using the Envoy proxy sidecar architecture, which intercepts all inbound and outbound service traffic and applies policies consistently.
A defining requirement from the question is encrypted communication using mutual TLS. Anthos Service Mesh provides automatic mTLS between services, ensuring encryption of all traffic and authenticating both client and server workloads. This eliminates the need for developers to manage certificates or implement TLS libraries manually. The mesh integrates with Google’s certificate authority, issuing cryptographically strong workload identities bound to Kubernetes service accounts. This identity model prevents unauthorized workloads from impersonating legitimate services and is far more reliable than IP-based access controls.
Automatic certificate rotation is another critical compliance requirement. Manual certificate management is prone to human error, outdated certificates, and security lapses. Anthos Service Mesh automates this rotation process, ensuring that certificates remain valid, secure, and up-to-date without operational burden.
Traffic shaping is equally important. Distributed microservices must remain resilient even when dependencies fail or when new versions are rolled out. Features like circuit breaking protect services from cascading failures when downstream services slow down. Retries help mitigate transient network issues. Weighted routing allows gradual introduction of new service versions, enabling safe canary deployments and blue-green releases. These capabilities significantly reduce deployment risks while maintaining system stability.
In multi-region architectures, observability is essential because failures in one region can propagate to others. Anthos Service Mesh automatically collects detailed telemetry, including request traces, latencies, error rates, and dependency graphs. Engineers gain deep visibility into how microservices interact across clusters, identifying bottlenecks and optimizing performance. The mesh integrates directly with Cloud Logging, Cloud Monitoring, and Cloud Trace for a unified observability stack.
Alternatives cannot meet all requirements. Cloud Router and firewall rules operate at the network layer and do not enforce cryptographic workload identity or application-layer encryption. Cloud NAT with Private Google Access manages outbound connectivity but cannot manage traffic between microservices. Internal Load Balancers operate regionally and cannot enforce identity-aware service mesh policies or provide distributed traffic shaping.
Anthos Service Mesh is therefore the only solution that provides complete zero-trust microservice security and traffic control without application code changes.
Question 102
Your enterprise processes highly sensitive financial records stored in BigQuery and Cloud Storage. To comply with data protection regulations, all access to these services must originate from approved VPC networks or on-prem networks connected via Interconnect. Even if attackers acquire IAM credentials, they must be blocked unless their request originates from a trusted network. The solution must prevent data exfiltration across project boundaries and enforce organization-wide service perimeters. Which Google Cloud technology is required?
A) Private Service Connect
B) VPC Service Controls
C) IAM Conditions
D) Cloud Armor
Answer:
B
Explanation:
The correct answer is VPC Service Controls because this technology provides strong, perimeter-based protection for Google-managed services such as BigQuery and Cloud Storage, extending security beyond identity-based access control. In regulated industries like finance, identity-based IAM controls alone cannot sufficiently protect sensitive data. If a privileged user’s credentials are stolen through phishing, session hijacking, or key leakage, an attacker could access sensitive datasets as long as IAM permissions allow it. VPC Service Controls prevent such breaches by ensuring that API requests must originate from within controlled service perimeters.
A VPC Service Controls perimeter groups entire projects into a secure boundary. Requests from outside the boundary are denied automatically, regardless of IAM permissions. This blocks data exfiltration not only to the public internet but also to other internal Google Cloud projects outside the perimeter. Sensitive BigQuery tables and Cloud Storage buckets remain accessible only within the trusted network context defined by the organization.
In addition to project-level perimeters, VPC Service Controls supports access levels, which allow fine-grained context rules such as requiring requests to originate from approved subnets, service accounts, device policies, or interconnect routes. This is vital for hybrid cloud architectures where sensitive workloads run partly on-prem and partly in Google Cloud. When on-prem networks connect via Interconnect or VPN, access levels can require requests to originate from those trusted paths. This ensures that even if IAM tokens are compromised, the attacker cannot access the managed services unless they are within the trusted network perimeter.
IAM Conditions (Option C) add contextual filters to IAM decisions but cannot enforce comprehensive service perimeters. They are evaluated only after a request reaches Google Cloud, whereas VPC Service Controls denies unauthorized requests at the perimeter layer before reaching the service backend. Cloud Armor (Option D) protects HTTP(S) applications but cannot restrict access to managed services like BigQuery or Cloud Storage. Private Service Connect (Option A) allows private connectivity but does not provide exfiltration prevention or perimeter enforcement.
VPC Service Controls is therefore the only technology that satisfies the requirement of organization-wide boundaries, exfiltration prevention, and trusted network restrictions for Google Cloud APIs.
Question 103
A global enterprise needs to interconnect 40+ VPCs across multiple business units and several on-prem data centers. The solution must support dynamic BGP routing, a hub-and-spoke topology that prevents transitive routing, centralized network visibility, and simplified onboarding of new environments. Which Google Cloud service best meets these requirements?
A) VPC Peering
B) Network Connectivity Center
C) Shared VPC
D) HA VPN with static routes
Answer:
B
Explanation:
Network Connectivity Center (NCC) is the correct answer because it provides a scalable, centralized hub-and-spoke hybrid networking architecture suitable for large enterprises with dozens of VPCs and multiple data centers. Managing connectivity at this scale becomes operationally complex when using traditional methods like VPC Peering, which is non-transitive and requires a full mesh of connections. A full mesh scales poorly because each additional VPC exponentially increases the number of peering relationships that must be established and maintained. NCC eliminates this problem by enabling a single hub where all VPCs and hybrid networks connect as spokes.
NCC integrates seamlessly with Cloud Router to support dynamic BGP routing. This enables automatic exchange of routes between on-prem data centers and VPC spokes. When new networks are added or routes change, BGP updates propagate automatically, reducing manual configuration and eliminating human error. This kind of dynamic routing is essential for hybrid and multi-cloud deployments where network changes occur frequently.
A critical requirement in the question is preventing transitive routing. Many enterprises must isolate traffic between business units for compliance, security, or organizational policy reasons. NCC enforces non-transitive connectivity by ensuring that spokes do not automatically communicate with each other unless explicitly configured. All traffic flows through the central hub, offering predictable routing behavior and simplifying governance.
Centralized operational visibility is another benefit of NCC. It provides a unified console to view and manage hybrid connectivity components including VPC spokes, VPN tunnels, Interconnect attachments, routing statuses, and connectivity health. In large enterprises, manually tracking this information across many systems is nearly impossible. NCC offers real-time connectivity insights, dramatically improving network diagnostics and incident response.
Alternatives fall short. VPC Peering does not scale and lacks transitive routing. Shared VPC centralizes administrative control but does not solve hybrid routing or multi-business-unit segmentation challenges. HA VPN with static routes cannot support large-scale routing because static routes become unmanageable as the environment grows.
Network Connectivity Center is the only Google Cloud solution designed specifically for large-scale, dynamic, hybrid, and multi-VPC connectivity.
Question 104
A global SaaS application must serve users from a single anycast IP that terminates TLS at Google’s edge, routes traffic to the nearest healthy backend, supports global health checks, provides multi-region failover, and utilizes Google’s private backbone for optimal performance. The platform must also support HTTP/2 and QUIC. Which Google Cloud load balancing product satisfies these requirements?
A) Regional External HTTP(S) Load Balancer
B) SSL Proxy Load Balancer
C) Global External HTTP(S) Load Balancer (Premium Tier)
D) Internal HTTP(S) Load Balancer
Answer:
C
Explanation:
The correct answer is the Global External HTTP(S) Load Balancer in Premium Tier because it provides a single anycast IP address that serves users globally from the nearest Google edge location. This kind of load balancing is critical for SaaS applications requiring consistent, low-latency access across continents. The Premium Tier load balancer announces the same IP from multiple edge points, ensuring users automatically reach the closest available endpoint without DNS manipulation.
The load balancer performs continuous, cross-region health checks to verify the health of backends. If a region becomes degraded or unavailable, traffic is instantly redirected to another healthy region. This global failover capability ensures high availability and reliability, which SaaS applications require to maintain user trust and continuity of service.
Protocol support is another key factor. HTTP/2 improves performance through multiplexed streams and header compression. QUIC, built on UDP, provides even faster connection setup and improved mobility performance. Only the Global External HTTP(S) Load Balancer supports QUIC and HTTP/2 across a global footprint.
In terms of routing path, the Premium Tier load balancer sends traffic from the client to Google’s edge and then across Google’s private backbone network to the selected backend. This avoids congestion on the public internet and ensures predictable performance. Alternate products do not match these capabilities. The Regional External HTTP(S) Load Balancer operates in a single region and cannot perform global failover. SSL Proxy supports global routing but lacks L7 HTTP features and QUIC support. Internal load balancers handle east-west traffic only and do not serve external clients.
The global HTTP(S) load balancer is the only solution that fulfills all requirements.
Question 105
Your organization requires private, high-throughput hybrid connectivity with guaranteed SLAs, redundant circuits, dynamic BGP routing, and deterministic low-latency performance. The solution must avoid the public internet entirely and support mission-critical workloads integrated across multiple Google Cloud regions. Which Google Cloud connectivity option should be deployed?
A) HA VPN
B) Cloud VPN with static routes
C) Dedicated Interconnect
D) Partner Interconnect single VLAN attachment
Answer:
C
Explanation:
Dedicated Interconnect is the correct answer because it provides private connectivity directly from an enterprise’s on-prem data center to Google Cloud using Google’s backbone infrastructure. This bypasses the public internet entirely, which is essential for mission-critical workloads requiring predictable performance, strong SLAs, low latency, and high throughput. Dedicated Interconnect offers up to 200 Gbps per connection when multiple circuits are used, making it ideal for large data transfers, real-time synchronization, and latency-sensitive applications.
Redundancy is built in through multiple physical circuits delivered from separate edge availability domains, ensuring that a circuit or infrastructure outage does not interrupt service. Dynamic BGP routing supported by Cloud Router enables automatic failover and efficient route propagation. This is critical for maintaining seamless connectivity as workloads scale or shift between regions.
HA VPN, while redundant, still relies on the public internet, which cannot guarantee latency or reliability. Cloud VPN with static routes lacks dynamic routing and scalability. Partner Interconnect can provide private connectivity, but a single attachment does not provide redundancy or SLA compliance, and high throughput requires multiple attachments managed through service providers.
Dedicated Interconnect is therefore the only option designed for enterprise-grade hybrid connectivity with guaranteed performance.
Question 106
Your organization is deploying a distributed analytics pipeline across multiple GKE clusters in three Google Cloud regions. The architecture requires end-to-end mutual TLS between all microservices, strong workload identity enforcement, centralized authorization policies, sophisticated traffic control such as retries and outlier detection, and unified request-level telemetry. Developers must not modify application code to support these capabilities. Which Google Cloud service best fulfills these requirements?
A) VPC Firewall Rules with Identity Tags
B) Anthos Service Mesh
C) Cloud NAT with Static Routes
D) External HTTP(S) Load Balancer
Answer:
B
Explanation:
Anthos Service Mesh is the correct answer because it is the only Google Cloud solution designed to deliver a complete, identity-aware, encrypted, policy-driven, observable service communication layer across microservices without requiring changes to application code. Distributed analytics pipelines often involve many interacting components such as data collectors, transformation services, indexing services, validation layers, and auxiliary control-plane microservices. All of these require secure, authenticated communication, particularly when workloads are distributed across multiple regions and clusters, as described in the question.
Anthos Service Mesh relies on the Envoy sidecar model, which transparently intercepts traffic between microservices. This approach enables the enforcement of mutual TLS automatically. mTLS is critical for protecting data in transit, verifying service identities, and ensuring that only authorized workloads can exchange data. The mesh provisions certificates for workloads automatically and rotates them on a frequent schedule without operator intervention. This is essential in systems where manual certificate management is not feasible due to the scale and complexity of the architecture.
Strong workload identity enforcement ensures that communication decisions are based on cryptographically verifiable identities rather than IP addresses. In a modern multi-cluster GKE environment, IP ranges frequently change, pods are ephemeral, and relying on IP-based trust is insecure. Anthos Service Mesh uses service account identities to enforce workload-to-workload authentication and authorization. Policies can be configured centrally to define which services can communicate and under what circumstances. This is a foundational element of zero-trust networking.
Traffic control features included in Anthos Service Mesh provide significant operational benefits. For example, retries help mitigate transient errors that frequently occur in distributed analytics systems when upstream or downstream services are under variable load. Outlier detection helps protect the system by automatically ejecting unhealthy endpoints from load balancing pools. This prevents a single misbehaving pod from degrading the entire pipeline. Circuit breaking avoids cascading failures by limiting traffic to unstable services. These traffic policies support system stability and resilience, which are crucial when processing large volumes of analytical data across regions.
Telemetry is another cornerstone of Anthos Service Mesh. The mesh automatically captures rich, structured metrics such as request counts, success rates, latency distributions, and traces of service interactions. For analytics pipelines that span many microservices, observability is indispensable. Engineers must understand how data moves between services, where latency accumulates, and where failure points may arise. Anthos Service Mesh integrates natively with Cloud Monitoring, Cloud Logging, and Cloud Trace, providing deep visibility without requiring developers to add custom instrumentation code.
Alternative solutions cannot satisfy the requirements. VPC firewall rules cannot enforce workload identity or provide traffic management features such as retries, circuit breaking, and outlier detection. Cloud NAT with static routes simply manages outbound IP translation and does not impose service-to-service security or telemetry. External HTTP(S) Load Balancers operate at the edge for client-to-service traffic, not internal service mesh traffic, and cannot enforce mTLS or workload identity across dozens of microservices.
Anthos Service Mesh is the only Google Cloud service purpose-built to deliver mTLS, identity-based authorization, traffic control, and comprehensive observability without requiring any code changes from developers, making it the correct answer.
Question 107
Your security team requires that access to sensitive BigQuery datasets and Cloud Storage buckets must not only rely on IAM permissions but also require that API requests originate from specific trusted VPC networks or on-prem networks connected through Interconnect. The organization must prevent data exfiltration across project boundaries and restrict access to Google-managed services at the API layer. Which Google Cloud feature satisfies these requirements?
A) Private Google Access
B) VPC Service Controls
C) Cloud Armor Advanced Rules
D) IAM Conditions with Source IP Restriction
Answer:
B
Explanation:
The correct answer is VPC Service Controls because this Google Cloud technology introduces a perimeter-based security model that restricts access to Google-managed services such as Cloud Storage, BigQuery, and Pub/Sub, based on network context rather than identity alone. In regulated environments where sensitive data must be kept inside secure boundaries, IAM permissions alone are insufficient. If an attacker steals valid credentials through phishing, leaked keys, or compromised service accounts, those credentials could be used from an unknown location. VPC Service Controls prevent this by placing resource projects inside a service perimeter and only allowing requests from specifically authorized VPC networks or hybrid networks.
A service perimeter acts as a security boundary that encloses multiple Google Cloud projects. Sensitive services within the perimeter can only be accessed by requests originating from trusted sources. These sources may include specific VPC subnets, on-prem IP ranges routed through Interconnect, or VPN tunnels. Even if credentials are compromised, API calls that originate outside the perimeter are denied before IAM checks occur.
VPC Service Controls also protect against data exfiltration. For example, even if a user has permission to read a BigQuery table, the perimeter prevents exporting that data to a Cloud Storage bucket outside the perimeter. This is critical for enterprise and regulatory compliance. Many organizations must demonstrate that sensitive datasets cannot leave controlled environments, regardless of IAM permissions or application logic.
The solution also integrates with Access Context Manager, enabling access levels that impose conditions such as device trust, geographic restrictions, or specific network origins. This brings a comprehensive zero-trust model to Google-managed services.
Alternative options do not meet the requirements. Private Google Access ensures VMs in private networks can reach Google APIs but does not limit API access to only those networks. Cloud Armor protects HTTP(S) applications but cannot restrict API-level access to BigQuery or Cloud Storage. IAM Conditions allow contextual IAM constraints but cannot enforce perimeter-level restrictions or prevent cross-project exfiltration.
VPC Service Controls is the only feature designed specifically to prevent unauthorized access and data exfiltration from Google-managed services based on trusted network perimeters, making it the correct choice.
Question 108
A multinational company needs a scalable hybrid networking architecture for connecting 30+ VPCs and multiple on-prem data centers. The solution must support dynamic BGP routing, hub-and-spoke segmentation to prevent transitive routing, centralized connectivity visibility, and simplified onboarding of new networks. Which Google Cloud service provides these capabilities?
A) Shared VPC
B) Network Connectivity Center
C) VPC Peering
D) Cloud Router only
Answer:
B
Explanation:
The correct answer is Network Connectivity Center (NCC) because it enables a centralized hub-and-spoke network topology that simplifies hybrid connectivity and scales efficiently for large enterprises. When organizations grow to dozens of VPCs and multiple data centers, traditional connectivity methods become unmanageable. VPC Peering, for example, does not support transitive routing, meaning each VPC must be directly peered with every other VPC it needs to communicate with. This results in exponential growth of peering relationships and administrative overhead.
NCC solves this by creating a central connectivity hub. All networks—VPCs, VPNs, Interconnect attachments—connect to the hub as spokes. Traffic flows through the hub, ensuring centralized control and non-transitive routing. This segmentation is critical for multi-business-unit enterprises that require network isolation for compliance or organizational boundaries.
Dynamic routing is provided through Cloud Router integration. BGP automatically propagates routes between on-prem and VPC spokes. When new networks are added, BGP updates flow throughout the system without manual configuration. This automation reduces operational risk and simplifies onboarding of new business units or regions.
NCC also provides centralized network visibility. Administrators can see the entire connectivity topology in a unified interface, including the health of spokes, routing paths, connected sites, and Interconnect statuses. This is crucial for diagnosing connectivity issues in complex hybrid environments.
Shared VPC provides centralized network administration but does not solve hybrid routing or multi-VPC interconnectivity requirements. VPC Peering scales poorly and lacks a transitive model. Cloud Router alone cannot create a hub-and-spoke architecture.
Thus, NCC is the only option meeting all requirements for dynamic routing, segmentation, visibility, and scale.
Question 109
A global e-commerce platform requires a single anycast public IP that routes users to the nearest healthy backend, supports global health checks, provides seamless multi-region failover, terminates TLS at Google’s edge, and supports QUIC and HTTP/2. Which Google Cloud load balancer best meets these requirements?
A) TCP Proxy Load Balancer
B) Regional External HTTP(S) Load Balancer
C) Global External HTTP(S) Load Balancer (Premium Tier)
D) Internal HTTP(S) Load Balancer
Answer:
C
Explanation:
The correct answer is the Global External HTTP(S) Load Balancer (Premium Tier) because it is designed for global applications requiring low latency, intelligent routing, and seamless multi-region failover. This load balancer uses a single anycast IP that is advertised globally from many Google edge locations. When users connect, they automatically reach the closest Google edge, minimizing latency.
TLS is terminated at the edge, which improves performance and reduces load on backend servers. The load balancer then uses Google’s private backbone network to route traffic to the closest healthy backend region. This ensures optimal performance even when users are distributed worldwide.
Global health checks continuously verify the health of backend services across all configured regions. If a region becomes degraded, the load balancer automatically diverts traffic to another region without requiring DNS updates. This minimizes downtime and improves resilience.
The load balancer supports HTTP/2 and QUIC, which are essential for modern applications requiring fast page loads, reduced connection setup time, and improved performance over mobile networks. Alternatives do not fulfill all requirements. TCP Proxy Load Balancer lacks L7 routing capabilities. The Regional External HTTP(S) Load Balancer operates only within one region. Internal HTTP(S) Load Balancer handles only private traffic.
Only the Premium Tier global HTTP(S) Load Balancer satisfies all the global performance, routing, protocol, and failover requirements.
Question 110
Your enterprise requires private, high-capacity hybrid connectivity that avoids the public internet entirely, provides redundant circuits with SLAs, supports dynamic BGP routing, and delivers deterministic low latency for mission-critical applications that span multiple Google Cloud regions. Which Google Cloud service should be used?
A) Cloud VPN
B) Partner Interconnect (single VLAN)
C) Dedicated Interconnect
D) HA VPN
Answer:
C
Explanation:
Dedicated Interconnect is the correct solution because it provides private, enterprise-grade connectivity directly from your on-prem data center to Google Cloud through Google’s backbone network. This connectivity does not use the internet at any point, ensuring deterministic performance, enhanced security, and low latency for mission-critical workloads.
The service includes built-in redundancy through multiple physical circuits. These circuits are delivered from separate Google edge availability domains, ensuring that a localized outage does not break connectivity. Dedicated Interconnect also provides robust SLAs backed by Google Cloud, making it suitable for regulated or business-critical environments.
Cloud Router integration enables dynamic BGP routing, allowing seamless failover between circuits and automatic propagation of route updates. When new networks are added or routing changes occur, BGP ensures they are communicated across all links without manual reconfiguration.
Cloud VPN and HA VPN use the public internet and therefore cannot guarantee predictable performance. Partner Interconnect can provide private connectivity, but a single VLAN attachment does not provide redundancy, SLA guarantees, or the performance required for enterprise-grade mission-critical systems.
Dedicated Interconnect is the only solution offering the necessary SLAs, performance, and reliability for high-capacity hybrid connectivity across regions.
Question 111
A multinational corporation is deploying a multi-region microservice platform across several GKE clusters. The platform must enforce encrypted service-to-service communication via automatic mutual TLS, apply centralized authorization rules based on workload identities, offer observability with request-level tracing, and support advanced traffic behaviors including retries, timeouts, canary-weight routing, and fault injection. Developers cannot modify the microservice code. Which Google Cloud solution fulfills all these requirements?
A) Internal TCP/UDP Load Balancing
B) Anthos Service Mesh
C) Cloud Router with HA VPN
D) VPC Firewall Rules with Service Accounts
Answer:
B
Explanation:
Anthos Service Mesh is the correct answer because it is Google Cloud’s fully integrated service mesh solution that delivers automatic mutual TLS, identity-based policy enforcement, sophisticated traffic shaping, and deep observability without requiring developers to modify their applications. This question describes a complex multi-region distributed microservices environment running across several GKE clusters, which introduces challenges around security, resiliency, consistency, and debugging. Anthos Service Mesh is designed specifically for such environments, offering capabilities that no networking layer alone can provide.
Mutual TLS is one of the essential requirements. Anthos Service Mesh automates the generation, distribution, and rotation of TLS certificates associated with each workload identity. These workload identities, linked to Kubernetes service accounts, create strong cryptographic assurances about which service is communicating. Unlike IP-based controls, workload identities remain stable even when pods reschedule or IP ranges shift. The mesh enforces mutual TLS transparently, meaning each service verifies the identity of its peer, guaranteeing authenticity and privacy across all communication paths.
Centralized authorization based on workload identities is another key capability. Anthos Service Mesh allows administrators to define service-to-service access policies using identity-based rules. For example, policy could state that service A may call service B, but service C may not. These policies are evaluated at the Envoy proxy level, enabling fine-grained control without depending on underlying IP ranges or firewall policies. This is essential in zero-trust architectures, where trust must be built on verified identities rather than network segmentation alone.
Traffic shaping and resiliency features are crucial in modern distributed architectures. Service meshes like Anthos provide retries for idempotent operations, timeouts to limit latency accumulation, and circuit breaking to protect upstream services from overload when downstream services become unhealthy. Canary-weight routing allows progressive rollout of new service versions, directing a small percentage of traffic to newer versions to validate performance before increasing deployment size. Fault injection helps teams test how services behave under degraded conditions, an important capability for highly resilient architectures.
Observability is another foundational requirement. In distributed microservices environments, understanding how requests traverse various services is critical. Anthos Service Mesh automatically collects telemetry data, including latency metrics, error rates, dependency graphs, and distributed traces. Engineers can diagnose bottlenecks or anomalies with far clearer visibility than traditional logging or tracing that must be manually instrumented. Anthos Service Mesh integrates directly with Cloud Monitoring, Cloud Logging, Cloud Trace, and third-party systems like Prometheus, enabling consistent observability across multiple clusters.
The alternative options do not match these requirements. Internal TCP/UDP Load Balancing operates at Layer 4 and does not provide service identity or encrypted mesh-wide communication. Cloud Router with HA VPN enables hybrid routing but has no capabilities related to microservice identity, mTLS, or traffic shaping. VPC Firewall rules can allow or block traffic, but they lack the ability to encrypt traffic, enforce identity policies, shape traffic flows, or collect request-level telemetry.
Anthos Service Mesh is therefore the only solution that meets the full set of requirements: automatic mTLS, identity-based authorization, advanced traffic control, and deep observability.
Question 112
Your company handles regulated health records in BigQuery and Cloud Storage. To comply with strict data protection rules, API access must originate only from trusted VPC networks or Interconnect-connected on-prem networks. Even if IAM keys are leaked, attackers must be blocked unless the request originates inside an authorized network boundary. The solution must prevent data exfiltration to other projects or external destinations. Which Google Cloud product should be implemented?
A) Cloud Armor
B) VPC Service Controls
C) Private Service Connect
D) IAM Conditions with device trust rules
Answer:
B
Explanation:
VPC Service Controls is the correct solution because it is the only Google Cloud feature specifically designed to enforce service perimeters around Google-managed services such as BigQuery, Cloud Storage, and Cloud Pub/Sub. These perimeters ensure that requests to sensitive services can only originate from trusted networks and that sensitive data cannot be exfiltrated outside defined boundaries, even if IAM credentials are compromised.
IAM controls focus on identity, defining which users or service accounts are allowed to interact with resources. However, they do not enforce where those requests originate from. If a malicious actor obtains valid IAM credentials through phishing, credential theft, or API key exposure, they could access data from anywhere in the world unless a contextual layer of network-based access control is applied. VPC Service Controls addresses this by blocking requests at the API perimeter when they originate from outside an approved service perimeter.
A service perimeter can encompass multiple Google Cloud projects. All projects inside the perimeter function as a single protected group. Requests that originate from outside the protected context—whether from a different VPC, external IP ranges, or a different project—are denied even before IAM permission checks. This dramatically enhances security by creating a “walled garden” around sensitive data.
Additionally, VPC Service Controls prevent data exfiltration. For instance, even if a user or service account inside the perimeter tries to copy BigQuery results to a Cloud Storage bucket outside the perimeter, the action is blocked. This is essential for handling regulated health records, financial data, or government information.
Access Context Manager integrates with VPC Service Controls to provide fine-grained access levels. Organizations can enforce constraints based on VPC subnet, user identity, device context, region, or hybrid connectivity path. For example, only users connecting through an approved Interconnect link from a specific on-prem data center might be allowed to run BigQuery queries.
Private Service Connect allows private connectivity but not perimeter enforcement. IAM Conditions add contextual controls at the identity level but cannot prevent cross-project or cross-organization exfiltration. Cloud Armor applies only to HTTP(S) workloads and does not secure Google-managed service APIs.
VPC Service Controls is therefore the only solution that provides API-level perimeter security, data exfiltration protection, and network-trusted access—exactly matching the requirements.
Question 113
A large enterprise with 50+ VPCs and several global data centers needs a scalable hybrid connectivity architecture. Requirements include dynamic BGP routing, hub-and-spoke segmentation to prevent accidental transitive routing between business units, centralized topology visibility, and automated onboarding of new networks. Which Google Cloud networking product is the best fit?
A) Shared VPC
B) Network Connectivity Center
C) Cloud VPN with static routes
D) Full mesh VPC Peering
Answer:
B
Explanation:
Network Connectivity Center (NCC) is the correct solution because it provides a centralized hub-and-spoke architecture ideal for organizations with complex, large-scale hybrid environments. NCC allows enterprises to simplify connectivity between dozens of VPCs and hybrid on-prem networks while ensuring predictable routing behavior, centralized control, and dynamic BGP routing.
Full mesh VPC Peering becomes operationally unmanageable as the number of VPCs grows. Each VPC must peer directly with every other VPC that requires communication, resulting in exponential growth of links and a complex, fragile architecture. Additionally, VPC Peering does not support transitive routing, which means even a full mesh cannot create a clean hub-and-spoke topology.
Shared VPC centralizes network administration within an organization but still maintains a flat routing model that does not inherently prevent transitive communication between projects. Shared VPC also does not solve the challenge of integrating multiple business units or externally managed environments.
Cloud VPN with static routes is not suitable for environments requiring dynamic routing or large-scale growth. Static routes must be manually updated every time a new network is added, increasing the risk of configuration drift and operational errors.
NCC, however, creates a true hub-and-spoke architecture. VPC networks and hybrid networks (via VPN, Interconnect, Partner Interconnect) connect to the NCC hub as spokes. This structure inherently prevents transitive routing because spokes do not automatically route to each other. Instead, routing decisions are made centrally, ensuring clear boundaries between different business units or application domains.
Cloud Router provides dynamic BGP propagation across the NCC hub. When a new VPC or on-prem network is added as a spoke, its routes automatically propagate to the hub and, when configured, to other authorized spokes. This dramatically simplifies onboarding and reduces the risk of misconfiguration.
NCC offers centralized visibility, providing a consolidated view of all connectivity resources, including VPN tunnels, Interconnect attachments, routing information, and VPC spokes. This simplifies troubleshooting, compliance verification, and network audits.
For these reasons, Network Connectivity Center is the only option capable of meeting the full scale, segmentation, and dynamic routing requirements described.
Question 114
A global SaaS analytics platform must provide low-latency access to customers worldwide using a single anycast IP. The platform requires global health checks, automatic failover between regions, TLS termination at the nearest edge, and intelligent routing over Google’s private backbone. QUIC and HTTP/2 support are mandatory. Which Google Cloud load balancer satisfies these requirements?
A) SSL Proxy Load Balancer
B) Global External HTTP(S) Load Balancer (Premium Tier)
C) Regional External HTTP(S) Load Balancer
D) Internal HTTP(S) Load Balancer
Answer:
B
Explanation:
The Global External HTTP(S) Load Balancer in Premium Tier is the correct solution because it is specifically engineered for global applications requiring advanced, low-latency, intelligent routing using a single anycast IP address. This is a critical requirement for SaaS analytics platforms that serve users across multiple continents and must provide consistently excellent performance.
The load balancer terminates TLS at the Google edge, offloading encryption workloads from backend services and improving performance by reducing round-trip time. From the edge, traffic is carried across Google’s private backbone network, ensuring predictable latency, congestion avoidance, and high reliability. This design outperforms DNS-based global balancing or multi-region deployments relying on local load balancers.
The global load balancer performs continuous health checks across all regions. If one region experiences a failure, user traffic automatically shifts to another healthy region. This ensures uninterrupted service availability and removes the need for manual failover processes or DNS changes.
Protocol support is critical: HTTP/2 improves performance through header compression and multiplexing, and QUIC provides faster connection establishment, better mobility support, and improved throughput on unreliable networks. Only the Global External HTTP(S) Load Balancer supports QUIC at a global scale.
The alternatives cannot meet all requirements. Regional External HTTP(S) Load Balancers only operate within a single region. SSL Proxy Load Balancer supports global routing but lacks full L7 capabilities and QUIC support. Internal HTTP(S) Load Balancer is limited to VPC internal traffic.
Thus, only the Premium Tier global HTTP(S) load balancer satisfies global, intelligent routing, high performance, advanced protocol support, and cross-region failover.
Question 115
A financial services company requires private, high-bandwidth hybrid connectivity that avoids the public internet completely, provides redundant circuits with end-to-end SLAs, supports dynamic BGP routing for automatic failover, and delivers predictable low-latency performance for mission-critical workloads spanning multiple Google Cloud regions. Which Google Cloud hybrid connectivity option should be chosen?
A) HA VPN
B) Dedicated Interconnect
C) Cloud VPN with static routing
D) Partner Interconnect single VLAN
Answer:
B
Explanation:
Dedicated Interconnect is the correct solution because it provides enterprise-grade, private connectivity directly from an on-prem data center to Google Cloud via Google’s backbone network. This ensures that data never traverses the public internet, a key requirement for highly regulated industries such as financial services, where data confidentiality, low latency, and predictable performance are critical.
Dedicated Interconnect offers high bandwidth—up to 100 Gbps per link, and even higher when aggregated—making it suitable for mission-critical workloads that require continuous data synchronization, real-time transaction processing, or high-volume analytics across multiple regions.
Redundancy is built directly into the Dedicated Interconnect architecture. Each connection is provisioned in pairs across separate Google edge availability domains. This ensures fault tolerance in case of hardware failures, fiber cuts, or localized outages. These redundant circuits are backed by Google’s SLAs, guaranteeing availability, latency targets, and packet delivery.
Dynamic BGP routing via Cloud Router enables automatic failover. If one circuit fails, BGP immediately reroutes traffic through another available path. This automation eliminates the need for manual intervention and ensures continuous uptime.
Alternatives do not meet all requirements. HA VPN still relies on the public internet, making performance unpredictable. Cloud VPN with static routes lacks dynamic routing and cannot scale to high bandwidth requirements. A single VLAN Partner Interconnect lacks redundancy and SLA-backed guarantees unless deployed with multiple attachments and partner coordination.
Dedicated Interconnect is therefore the only solution that fully satisfies private connectivity, redundancy, SLAs, dynamic routing, and predictable performance for high-stakes financial workloads.
Question 116
Your organization runs a multi-region AI-powered microservice architecture on GKE. The system requires encrypted service-to-service communication, cryptographically verifiable workload identities, automatic certificate rotation, traffic management features for canary releases, rate limiting, retries, circuit breaking, and unified request-level telemetry across all clusters. These capabilities must be enforced without requiring developers to modify application code. Which Google Cloud solution provides all these capabilities?
A) Cloud Armor with custom rules
B) Anthos Service Mesh
C) Cloud Router with Interconnect
D) VPC Firewall rules with tags
Answer:
B
Explanation:
Anthos Service Mesh is the correct answer because it offers a complete, identity-aware, encrypted, policy-driven, and observable service communication framework for microservices distributed across multiple GKE clusters. This question describes an advanced architecture used in multi-region AI platforms, which typically involve inference engines, data preprocessors, retrieval services, caching layers, and traffic routers. Ensuring secure, reliable, and observable communication between these components is vital, and Anthos Service Mesh is specifically designed to fulfill these needs.
The requirement for encrypted service-to-service communication is addressed through mutual TLS. Anthos Service Mesh automatically provisions certificates, distributes them securely, and rotates them periodically. This eliminates the operational burden typically associated with manual certificate handling. Because mutual TLS is enforced between all workloads, no traffic passes unencrypted, ensuring compliance with strong security requirements applicable to multi-region architectures handling sensitive AI data.
Identity-based authorization is a foundational capability of Anthos Service Mesh. Workloads communicate based on cryptographically verified identities tied to Kubernetes service accounts. This identity model avoids reliance on IP addresses, which are ephemeral in containerized environments. Each time a pod restarts, its IP changes, but its identity remains stable. Policies can be defined to allow or deny communication based on these identities, implementing a strong zero-trust model.
Traffic management capabilities are essential for AI platforms where new model versions, updated microservices, or optimized inference logic must be deployed incrementally. Anthos Service Mesh supports canary releases, enabling only a small portion of traffic to flow to new service versions. Weighted traffic splitting helps progressively ramp up traffic until confidence is established. Rate limiting helps prevent overload when a new AI endpoint sees unexpected spikes. Retries and timeouts smooth out transient failures, particularly important for inference workloads dependent on upstream systems. Circuit breaking protects services from cascading failures when downstream services become unhealthy.
Unified telemetry is another major benefit. Anthos Service Mesh automatically logs request metrics, latencies, error rates, service dependency graphs, and distributed traces. In AI microservice systems, latency issues in one part of the inference pipeline can dramatically degrade overall performance. Having full visibility into request paths allows teams to identify bottlenecks, debug irregularities, and optimize system behavior. Engineers do not need to add code-level instrumentation because the Envoy sidecar proxies capture telemetry automatically.
Alternative solutions do not meet these requirements. Cloud Armor protects edge-facing HTTP(S) workloads but cannot provide internal service-to-service security. Cloud Router with Interconnect solves hybrid routing but does not address workload identity or mesh-level traffic shaping. VPC Firewall rules cannot enforce mTLS, identity-based authorization, traffic splitting, retries, or telemetry.
Anthos Service Mesh is therefore the only Google Cloud technology that provides comprehensive service-layer security, traffic management, and observability without requiring any application code changes.
Question 117:
A government-sector organization with strict security compliance needs to protect BigQuery datasets and Cloud Storage buckets from unauthorized access. API calls must only be allowed from approved VPC networks or on-prem networks routed through Interconnect. Even if IAM credentials are compromised, attackers must be blocked from accessing protected services. Data must not leave the secure perimeter or be copied to external projects. Which Google Cloud feature is required to meet these constraints?
A) Private Google Access
B) VPC Service Controls
C) Cloud Armor network edge policies
D) IAM Conditions with IP restriction
Answer:
B
Explanation:
VPC Service Controls is the correct answer because it creates a security perimeter around Google-managed services such as Cloud Storage, BigQuery, Cloud Pub/Sub, and others. This perimeter ensures that API requests must originate from authorized networks, such as specific VPCs or on-prem networks connected via Interconnect or VPN. This is essential for government organizations handling regulated data, where confidentiality, compliance, and non-exfiltration policies are mandatory.
IAM alone cannot guarantee that sensitive data will remain protected if credentials are stolen. VPC Service Controls introduces a contextual layer of security that blocks API requests originating outside trusted boundaries, even if the requester has valid IAM permissions. This protects against credential theft, one of the most common attack vectors.
Data exfiltration prevention is another critical capability. A compromised user inside a secure GCP project could attempt to copy BigQuery data into a Cloud Storage bucket located in another project. VPC Service Controls prevents this by enforcing perimeter boundaries that stop such outbound transfers. This ensures that regulated data cannot leave the environment, regardless of IAM privileges.
VPC Service Controls also integrates with Access Context Manager to define fine-grained access levels that combine network origin, identity attributes, device trust, or geographic location. These conditions can enforce policies such as allowing access only from approved on-prem locations routed through Interconnect.
Private Google Access (Option A) enables private access to APIs but cannot enforce perimeters. IAM Conditions (Option D) can restrict access from certain IPs but cannot prevent exfiltration or enforce organization-wide boundaries. Cloud Armor (Option C) applies only to HTTP(S) application endpoints and does not secure Google APIs.
Therefore, VPC Service Controls is the only solution that satisfies the perimeter-based, exfiltration-preventing, network-trusted access control model required by government-sector organizations.
Question 118
A global enterprise needs to interconnect 60+ VPC networks and multiple on-prem data centers. Requirements include a hub-and-spoke architecture, prevention of transitive routing, automatic BGP route propagation, centralized visibility of hybrid connections, and easy onboarding of new VPCs. Which Google Cloud service should the organization use?
A) Cloud Router alone
B) VPC Peering
C) Network Connectivity Center
D) Cloud VPN with static routes
Answer:
C
Explanation:
Network Connectivity Center (NCC) is the correct choice because it is the only Google Cloud service specifically engineered to provide scalable, centralized hub-and-spoke connectivity for large multi-VPC and hybrid network environments.
When an enterprise grows to dozens or hundreds of VPCs, traditional connectivity approaches break down. VPC Peering quickly becomes non-scalable due to the exponential growth of peering relationships required to maintain connectivity. Moreover, VPC Peering does not support transitive routing, meaning traffic cannot pass through an intermediary VPC, which forces organizations to manually maintain complex routing topologies.
NCC resolves these problems by implementing a hub-and-spoke model. Each VPC is attached as a spoke to a central hub. Hybrid networks such as on-prem data centers connect using Interconnect or VPN spokes. This model inherently prevents transitive routing, ensuring segmentation among business units. This is essential for compliance or operational security reasons.
Dynamic BGP routing is supported through Cloud Router integration. Cloud Router learns and advertises routes automatically across spokes. When a new VPC or on-prem network is connected, BGP distributes its routes without requiring manual configuration. This automation reduces complexity and eliminates configuration drift.
Centralized visibility is another major benefit. NCC provides a dashboard displaying all connectivity resources, routing relationships, health states, and hybrid connections. This is essential for large enterprises where understanding global routing behavior is challenging without a centralized tool.
Cloud Router alone cannot create a hub-and-spoke architecture. Cloud VPN with static routes lacks scalability and dynamic routing. VPC Peering is limited, non-transitive, and becomes unmanageable at scale.
Thus, NCC is the only service that meets all requirements for a scalable, centralized, dynamic hybrid connectivity architecture.
Question 119
A global media streaming service needs a highly resilient global load balancing solution. Requirements include a single anycast IP address, TLS termination at the nearest Google edge, global health checks, region-to-region failover, intelligent routing over Google’s private backbone, and support for HTTP/2 and QUIC. Which Google Cloud load balancer should be deployed?
A) SSL Proxy Load Balancer
B) Global External HTTP(S) Load Balancer (Premium Tier)
C) Regional External HTTP(S) Load Balancer
D) Internal HTTP(S) Load Balancer
Answer:
B
Explanation:
The Global External HTTP(S) Load Balancer (Premium Tier) is the correct solution because it provides global anycast IP delivery, edge termination, traffic routing over Google’s backbone, and protocol support required for modern media streaming platforms. These platforms depend heavily on low-latency delivery, intelligent routing, and worldwide availability.
When users access the service, traffic is directed to the nearest Google edge location using the single anycast IP. TLS is terminated at the edge, reducing latency and freeing backend services from handling encryption overhead. Google’s private backbone network transports the traffic to the healthiest backend region, ensuring optimal performance and minimizing jitter.
Global health checks ensure that backend services across all configured regions are monitored continuously. If an entire region becomes unhealthy, the load balancer automatically shifts traffic to another region, providing seamless failover without requiring DNS changes.
HTTP/2 and QUIC support improve connection performance through multiplexing, header compression, and faster handshake processes. QUIC, especially, enhances streaming performance by reducing packet loss sensitivity and accelerating recovery from interruptions.
The alternatives cannot meet the requirements. SSL Proxy Load Balancer supports some global routing but does not support full L7 capabilities or QUIC. Regional HTTP(S) Load Balancers cannot balance traffic across regions. Internal load balancers do not accept internet traffic.
Therefore, the Premium Tier Global External HTTP(S) Load Balancer is the only load balancer capable of delivering low-latency, globally distributed traffic with advanced protocol support.
Question 120
A financial trading firm requires private, low-latency hybrid connectivity between its on-prem trading systems and multiple Google Cloud regions. The connectivity must avoid the public internet entirely, provide redundant circuits backed by SLAs, support dynamic BGP routing for automatic failover, and deliver predictable high-throughput performance. Which Google Cloud hybrid connectivity option is the correct choice?
A) HA VPN
B) Dedicated Interconnect
C) Cloud VPN with static routing
D) Partner Interconnect single VLAN
Answer:
B
Explanation:
Dedicated Interconnect is the correct hybrid connectivity option because it offers private, physically isolated connections between on-prem infrastructure and Google Cloud. For financial trading environments where microseconds matter, avoiding the public internet is essential to reduce latency variability and eliminate potential congestion or packet loss.
Dedicated Interconnect connections deliver high throughput, reaching up to 100 Gbps per link and scaling far beyond that when multiple connections are aggregated. This is important for real-time trading systems that synchronize market data, risk metrics, and order book state across regions.
Redundant circuits are provided across separate Google edge availability domains to ensure fault tolerance. This redundancy is backed by SLAs that guarantee high availability and performance thresholds.
Dynamic BGP routing supported by Cloud Router allows automatic failover between circuits. If one path becomes unavailable, BGP reroutes traffic through alternative available paths instantly.
HA VPN still uses the public internet and therefore cannot provide deterministic performance. Cloud VPN with static routes lacks scalability and dynamic routing. Partner Interconnect with a single VLAN does not offer redundancy or SLA-backed guarantees.
Thus, Dedicated Interconnect is the only solution aligned with the strict performance and reliability requirements of financial trading workloads.
