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Question 121
Your company operates a multi-region AI inference platform hosted on GKE. The system requires mutual TLS between all microservices, workload identity–based authorization, centralized request-level logging and tracing, dynamic traffic routing for blue/green deployments, circuit breaking, fault injection, and rate-limiting capabilities. Developers must not modify any application code to enable these capabilities. Which Google Cloud solution fulfills every requirement?
A) Cloud Armor edge rules
B) Anthos Service Mesh
C) Cloud NAT with firewall rules
D) Regional External HTTP(S) Load Balancer
Answer:
B
Explanation:
Anthos Service Mesh is the correct solution because it delivers a full suite of service-to-service security, policy enforcement, observability, and traffic control capabilities without requiring changes to application code. This question describes a multi-region AI inference platform—a type of environment that usually involves many interacting microservices performing model invocation, feature retrieval, data preprocessing, model selection, logging, caching, feedback ingestion, and more. These workloads must communicate securely, efficiently, and reliably across clusters.
The requirement for mutual TLS is particularly important in AI systems where confidential models or data may be exchanged across services. Anthos Service Mesh utilizes Envoy sidecar proxies to enforce mutual TLS automatically. This ensures that each request between microservices is encrypted, authenticated, and validated. Because the mesh provisions and rotates certificates automatically, no manual certificate management is required.
Workload identity–based authorization is another critical requirement. With Anthos Service Mesh, policies are defined using Kubernetes service accounts that represent workload identities. These identities remain stable across pod restarts or migrations, unlike IP-based approaches. Authorization policies can be configured to specify which services are permitted to communicate, creating a strong zero-trust architecture. This eliminates the risk of unauthorized lateral movement inside the service network.
Centralized logging and request-level tracing are essential for diagnosing performance issues in AI inference pipelines, which often involve many services chained together. Anthos Service Mesh automatically collects telemetry, including detailed traces showing how requests traverse the pipeline. This helps teams identify bottlenecks, such as slow feature lookups or heavy model-loading operations. The mesh integrates directly with Cloud Logging, Cloud Monitoring, and Cloud Trace to give operators a consistent observability experience.
Dynamic traffic routing is another major feature. AI platforms frequently roll out updated models or new inference services gradually to avoid regressions. Anthos Service Mesh allows sophisticated rollout strategies such as weighted traffic distribution, blue/green deployments, and canary testing. Engineers can direct a small percentage of traffic to a new version of a model-serving service, monitor performance, and gradually increase traffic if metrics remain normal.
Circuit breaking, rate limiting, retries, and timeouts are essential resilience tools. Circuit breaking prevents unstable services from impacting upstream callers. Rate limiting protects services from overload during traffic spikes. Retries and timeouts help keep the system responsive during transient failures. These features are especially beneficial for AI services, which often depend on multiple upstream systems, such as feature stores or vector databases.
Fault injection is another powerful feature. Teams can introduce controlled latency, errors, or aborts into certain service calls to validate how the system behaves under failure conditions. This is essential for validating the robustness of the AI inference architecture before real incidents occur.
Alternative options cannot meet these requirements. Cloud Armor protects externally facing HTTP(S) applications but does not secure service-to-service communication inside a cluster. Cloud NAT handles outbound traffic and cannot enforce workload identities, telemetry, or traffic rules. The Regional External HTTP(S) Load Balancer handles user-to-service traffic, not microservice-to-microservice communication within a cluster.
Anthos Service Mesh is the only solution that satisfies the full range of security, observability, and traffic management needs without requiring any modifications to application code.
Question 122
A healthcare analytics company stores PHI data in BigQuery and Cloud Storage. Due to strict compliance rules, API requests must originate only from trusted VPC networks or through Interconnect from approved on-prem locations. Data must remain within an isolated perimeter and must not be copied to external projects, even by authorized users. Which Google Cloud feature meets these requirements?
A) IAM Conditions using source IP
B) VPC Service Controls
C) Private Google Access
D) Cloud VPN tunnels
Answer:
B
Explanation:
VPC Service Controls is the correct choice because it provides a robust perimeter-based security model for protecting access to Google-managed services like BigQuery and Cloud Storage. This is essential for organizations handling PHI, financial data, or other regulated information. IAM alone cannot protect against credential compromise or prevent data exfiltration, making an additional layer of contextual security mandatory.
The first major requirement is that API requests must originate only from approved VPCs or on-prem locations routed through Interconnect. VPC Service Controls enforces this by ensuring that requests coming from outside the perimeter are blocked before they even reach IAM authorization checks. This means that if credentials were compromised, the attacker would still be unable to access data without being inside a trusted network boundary.
The second requirement is the prevention of data exfiltration. Even authorized users should be prevented from copying sensitive data to external Cloud Storage buckets or exporting BigQuery results to projects outside the perimeter. VPC Service Controls achieves this by creating a walled garden around protected resources. Any attempt to move data across the perimeter boundary is denied automatically. This ensures that sensitive PHI remains within the authorized environment, protecting against both external attacks and insider threats.
IAM Conditions allow restrictions based on attributes such as source IP or device trust but cannot prevent cross-project exfiltration. Private Google Access allows private access to Google APIs from private VMs but does not restrict which APIs can be accessed or where data can be copied. Cloud VPN tunnels provide encryption and connectivity but do not enforce API-level access controls or data exfiltration protections.
For healthcare organizations that must comply with HIPAA, HITRUST, or similar frameworks, VPC Service Controls is the only Google Cloud technology capable of enforcing strict network-based API controls and ensuring that sensitive data cannot leave designated boundaries.
Question 123
A global enterprise needs to simplify connectivity between 70 VPC networks and multiple on-prem data centers spanning several continents. The architecture must support automatic BGP propagation, prevent transitive routing between business units, centralize visibility, and enable easy onboarding of new networks. Which Google Cloud service should be used?
A) Shared VPC
B) Network Connectivity Center
C) VPC Peering
D) Cloud Router only
Answer:
B
Explanation:
Network Connectivity Center is the correct answer because it centralizes hybrid and multi-VPC connectivity in a scalable hub-and-spoke model. Large global enterprises often struggle with the complexities of managing tens of VPCs, multiple data centers, and regionally distributed workloads. Traditional networking approaches such as full mesh VPC Peering or ad hoc VPN tunnels become operationally unsustainable at this scale.
NCC solves this by allowing each VPC or on-prem network to connect as a spoke to a central hub. Because spokes do not automatically route to each other, transitive routing is prevented. This ensures that business units remain isolated unless explicit routing policies are configured. This segmentation is crucial for compliance, security, and organizational boundaries.
Cloud Router integrates with NCC to provide dynamic BGP routing. This means that when an on-prem network advertises new prefixes, they automatically propagate through the NCC hub and become available to authorized spokes. If a new VPC is created, it can join the NCC environment, and its routing information will automatically propagate. This greatly simplifies onboarding and reduces administrative overhead.
Centralized visibility is a defining advantage. NCC provides dashboards displaying all routers, Interconnect attachments, VPN tunnels, routing tables, and connectivity health. This drastically improves troubleshooting and network governance.
Shared VPC offers centralized network control but does not solve hybrid routing or provide hub-and-spoke segmentation. VPC Peering lacks transitive routing and becomes unmanageable in large-scale environments. Cloud Router alone cannot create a hub-and-spoke connectivity model.
NCC is therefore the only service capable of meeting the scale, routing, segmentation, and visibility requirements described.
Question 124
A global online learning platform requires a load balancer that uses a single anycast IP, routes users to the nearest healthy backend, supports global health checks, terminates TLS at the edge, uses Google’s private backbone for traffic delivery, and supports HTTP/2 and QUIC. Which load balancer should the platform deploy?
A) SSL Proxy Load Balancer
B) Global External HTTP(S) Load Balancer (Premium Tier)
C) Regional External HTTP(S) Load Balancer
D) TCP Proxy Load Balancer
Answer:
B
Explanation:
The Premium Tier Global External HTTP(S) Load Balancer is the correct solution because it provides the global, edge-optimized, protocol-rich capabilities needed for a distributed online learning platform. Such platforms must deliver high-quality streaming, interactive video, quizzes, and real-time collaboration across continents. Latency, availability, and protocol optimizations are therefore central to user experience.
A single anycast IP address ensures that users around the world access the same endpoint, simplifying DNS configuration and ensuring that users connect to the nearest Google edge location. TLS is terminated at the edge, reducing latency for secure connections and improving performance on mobile and low-bandwidth networks.
Traffic between the edge and backend services is carried over Google’s private backbone network, ensuring deterministic performance, lower jitter, and fewer hops than the public internet. This is essential for maintaining consistent content delivery quality.
HTTP/2 support enables multiplexing and header compression, which improves webpage load times and video streaming efficiency. QUIC further enhances performance by improving connection establishment time, reducing packet loss effects, and providing better performance over unreliable networks.
Global health checks continuously monitor backend services in all regions. If a region becomes unhealthy or overloaded, the load balancer automatically reroutes traffic to the next best region. This ensures continuous availability and resilience.
The alternative load balancers cannot deliver this combination of features. SSL Proxy Load Balancer supports global routing but lacks full L7 features and QUIC support. Regional HTTP(S) Load Balancers do not support multi-region balancing. TCP Proxy Load Balancer operates at Layer 4 and does not support advanced HTTP/2/QUIC features.
Thus, the Premium Tier Global External HTTP(S) Load Balancer is the only option that meets the global performance, protocol support, and redundancy requirements of the platform.
Question 125
A global fintech company requires private, predictable, high-throughput hybrid connectivity that avoids the public internet, offers redundant circuits backed by SLAs, supports dynamic BGP routing, and provides low latency for mission-critical applications. Which Google Cloud hybrid connectivity solution should be used?
A) HA VPN
B) Dedicated Interconnect
C) Cloud VPN with static routes
D) Partner Interconnect single VLAN
Answer:
B
Explanation:
Dedicated Interconnect is the correct solution because it provides private, high-performance connectivity directly between on-prem systems and Google Cloud, bypassing the public internet entirely. Financial applications, especially those involving trading, real-time market data, and fraud detection, require extremely low latency and deterministic network performance. Public internet connectivity cannot provide such guarantees.
Dedicated Interconnect offers bandwidth capacities up to 100 Gbps per link and can aggregate multiple connections for even higher throughput. Redundant circuits are placed in separate Google edge availability domains to ensure high availability. These circuits are backed by SLAs that guarantee performance and uptime.
Dynamic routing using Cloud Router and BGP enables instantaneous failover if one link becomes unavailable. BGP automatically updates routes without manual intervention, maintaining the reliability essential for financial systems.
HA VPN and Cloud VPN travel over the public internet, making their latency and reliability unpredictable. Partner Interconnect single VLAN offers private connectivity but does not meet redundancy and SLA requirements unless deployed with multiple VLANs and partner coordination.
Dedicated Interconnect is therefore the only option that satisfies all performance, reliability, and security requirements for global fintech workloads.
Question 126
Your enterprise runs a globally distributed microservices architecture across multiple GKE clusters. You must enforce encrypted service-to-service communication using automatic mutual TLS, apply workload identity–based authorization policies, collect unified telemetry with distributed tracing, enable advanced traffic behavior including weighted routing, fault injection, circuit breaking, and retries, and enforce these capabilities across clusters without requiring any changes to application code. Which Google Cloud solution fulfills all of these requirements?
A) Cloud Armor
B) Anthos Service Mesh
C) VPC Firewall rules
D) HA VPN
Answer:
B
Explanation:
Anthos Service Mesh is the correct answer because it delivers a comprehensive suite of features addressing security, observability, and traffic governance across distributed microservices environments without requiring modifications to application code. This question describes an architecture where microservices are spread across multiple GKE clusters, often in multiple regions, creating a need for consistent, identity-aware service communication. Anthos Service Mesh provides the exact features required to secure and manage such complex service ecosystems.
The first major requirement is encrypted service-to-service communication using automatic mutual TLS. Anthos Service Mesh establishes mutual TLS transparently by injecting Envoy sidecar proxies into each microservice pod. These sidecars handle all aspects of encryption, key exchange, and authentication. The mesh manages certificates using automated provisioning and rotation based on workload identities derived from Kubernetes service accounts. This eliminates the risk of manual certificate mismanagement and ensures consistent, enterprise-grade encryption.
Workload identity–based authorization is another core requirement. Anthos Service Mesh enables fine-grained authorization policies based on workload identities, ensuring that only explicitly allowed workloads can communicate with one another. For instance, an authentication service might only be allowed to call a billing service, but not a model training service. These rules are defined at the mesh level and enforced uniformly across all clusters. Unlike IP-based firewall rules, workload identity does not change when pods restart, scale, or migrate.
Unified telemetry, distributed tracing, and structured request-level metrics are essential for diagnosing performance issues. Anthos Service Mesh automatically collects metrics and logs at the sidecar level. Operators can visualize service dependency graphs, track request latency across microservices, detect bottlenecks, and correlate errors with specific traffic paths. In distributed architectures where a single request traverses multiple services, having automatic visibility into each hop dramatically reduces debugging complexity.
Modern microservices require advanced traffic management capabilities. Anthos Service Mesh provides traffic splitting for canary or blue/green deployments, enabling teams to send 1% of traffic to a new service version, observe behavior, and gradually increase traffic. Retries help stabilize transient failures, while timeouts prevent services from waiting indefinitely for degraded endpoints. Circuit breaking protects upstream services by stopping traffic to repeatedly failing endpoints. Fault injection allows testing the system’s resilience under controlled failure scenarios by injecting delay, aborts, or error codes into live traffic simulations. These capabilities ensure that microservices can evolve and update safely without impacting system stability.
The requirement that developers must not modify application code is also fundamental. Anthos Service Mesh operates entirely outside the application layer. Teams do not need to change code, add libraries, or implement custom logic for retries, TLS handling, or telemetry. The mesh intercepts traffic at the Envoy proxy level, meaning all features apply uniformly regardless of the language or framework used by the microservices.
Alternative options cannot fulfill these requirements. Cloud Armor secures external HTTP(S) applications but does not provide service-to-service encryption or identity-aware policies. VPC Firewall rules control IP-based access but cannot enforce workload identity, mutual TLS, retries, or telemetry. HA VPN provides secure hybrid connectivity but is unrelated to microservice-level security or traffic shaping.
Anthos Service Mesh is therefore the only Google Cloud solution that provides encryption, identity-based access control, observability, and sophisticated traffic features across clusters without requiring any application code changes.
Question 127
A financial compliance organization stores sensitive data in BigQuery and Cloud Storage. It must prevent unauthorized data access even if IAM credentials are leaked. API requests must originate only from approved VPC networks or on-prem networks connected via Interconnect. Data must be prevented from being copied to resources outside the protected environment. Which Google Cloud technology should be deployed?
A) IAM Conditions
B) VPC Service Controls
C) Cloud Armor
D) Private Google Access
Answer:
B
Explanation:
VPC Service Controls is the correct solution because it creates robust security perimeters around sensitive Google Cloud services such as Cloud Storage, BigQuery, and Pub/Sub. Financial compliance environments require far stronger protections than IAM alone can provide. IAM determines who can access resources, but does not determine where the access originates from. If credentials are stolen, IAM cannot stop unauthorized requests from outside approved networks. VPC Service Controls solves exactly this vulnerability.
The first requirement is preventing unauthorized data access if IAM credentials are compromised. VPC Service Controls enforces request boundaries at the API layer. If a request to BigQuery or Cloud Storage originates outside an authorized network—whether from a foreign country, a compromised VM, or an unauthorized VPC—it is blocked before IAM evaluation. This ensures attackers cannot use stolen credentials to access protected data.
The second requirement is limiting API access to approved VPC networks and on-prem environments connected via Interconnect or VPN. VPC Service Controls relies on Access Context Manager to enforce policies based on network origin. Only networks registered as part of the service perimeter can access protected resources.
Another critical requirement is preventing data exfiltration. Even insiders or authorized workloads could attempt to copy sensitive data to external locations. VPC Service Controls prevents this by enforcing that any BigQuery export, Cloud Storage copy, or Pub/Sub publish must occur within the perimeter. Any attempt to move data to a project outside the perimeter is blocked automatically.
IAM Conditions can restrict access based on attributes such as IP ranges, but they do not prevent cross-project exfiltration or enforce service perimeters. Cloud Armor protects websites, not Google Cloud APIs. Private Google Access allows private networks to reach Google APIs but does not enforce boundaries around where data can flow.
Therefore, VPC Service Controls is the only Google Cloud technology that prevents unauthorized access and data exfiltration at the API level while requiring network-trusted origins.
Question 128
A global enterprise wants to interconnect 80 VPCs and multiple on-prem data centers using a scalable hybrid networking model. Requirements include hub-and-spoke segmentation, prevention of transitive routing, dynamic BGP route propagation, simplified onboarding of new networks, and centralized connectivity visibility. Which Google Cloud solution is the best fit?
A) VPC Peering
B) Network Connectivity Center
C) Cloud Router only
D) Shared VPC
Answer:
B
Explanation:
Network Connectivity Center (NCC) is the correct answer because it addresses the complexity, scalability, and governance challenges of large-scale hybrid and multi-VPC architectures. When organizations grow to dozens of VPCs across regions and multiple on-prem networks, traditional networking approaches become operationally unmanageable.
NCC introduces a hub-and-spoke connectivity model. Each VPC attaches to the NCC hub as a spoke. Hybrid networks such as on-prem sites connected via Interconnect or VPN also join as spokes. Because the architecture is hub-based, transitive routing is prevented. This ensures business units remain isolated unless explicitly connected via routing policies. This prevents accidental cross-unit communication and helps maintain compliance boundaries.
Cloud Router integrates with NCC to support dynamic BGP routing. This enables real-time route propagation between VPCs and hybrid networks. When a new VPC connects, its routes automatically propagate through the hub. When an on-prem network advertises new prefixes, these propagate automatically as well. This dramatically reduces operational workload by eliminating the need for manual route configuration.
Centralized visibility is another major benefit. NCC provides a single interface showing all VPC spokes, hybrid connections, routing metrics, health states, and topology diagrams. Large organizations often struggle to understand the end-to-end routing picture across dozens of VPCs; NCC solves this challenge.
VPC Peering does not support transitive routing and becomes unmanageable at scale. Cloud Router only provides dynamic routing but cannot create hub-and-spoke architectures. Shared VPC centralizes control within a single organization but does not solve multi-VPC hybrid connectivity challenges.
Thus, NCC is the only solution that meets hub-and-spoke, dynamic routing, segmentation, and visibility requirements.
Question 129
A global streaming analytics platform needs a load balancer that provides a single anycast IP, routes users to the closest healthy backend, terminates TLS at the edge, performs global health checks, supports region-to-region failover, and uses Google’s private backbone for traffic delivery. HTTP/2 and QUIC must be supported. Which Google Cloud load balancer meets all 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 Premium Tier Global External HTTP(S) Load Balancer is the correct solution because it is Google Cloud’s globally distributed, edge-optimized load balancing platform designed for high-performance applications like streaming analytics systems. These systems must deliver content rapidly, minimize latency, and maintain resilience across multiple regions.
The load balancer provides a single anycast IP that is advertised globally. Users automatically connect to the nearest Google edge location. This reduces latency dramatically compared to DNS-based balancing, where end-users may be routed inefficiently.
TLS termination at the edge improves performance by reducing round-trip times and offloading encryption overhead. From the edge, Google’s private backbone transports traffic to backend services, ensuring predictable performance and minimal packet loss.
Global health checks continuously monitor backend services across all regions. If a region experiences an outage or performance degradation, the load balancer automatically redirects traffic to the next best region, ensuring uninterrupted service.
HTTP/2 and QUIC support is essential for streaming analytics systems to enhance throughput, reduce connection overhead, and provide better performance under mobile and unreliable network conditions. QUIC’s faster handshake and resilience against packet loss make it particularly advantageous.
Alternative options fall short. SSL Proxy Load Balancer supports global routing but does not provide full L7 capabilities or QUIC. Regional HTTP(S) Load Balancer cannot perform cross-region routing. Internal HTTP(S) Load Balancer is for private VPC traffic only.
Thus, the only solution meeting all requirements is the Premium Tier Global HTTP(S) Load Balancer.
Question 130
A multinational bank requires private, high-capacity hybrid connectivity that bypasses the public internet completely, offers redundant circuits backed by SLAs, supports dynamic BGP routing with automatic failover, and provides consistent low latency for mission-critical workloads across multiple Google Cloud regions. Which Google Cloud hybrid connectivity option should be used?
A) HA VPN
B) Dedicated Interconnect
C) Cloud VPN with static routes
D) Partner Interconnect single VLAN
Answer:
B
Explanation:
Dedicated Interconnect is the correct solution because it provides private, high-bandwidth, low-latency connectivity between on-prem data centers and Google Cloud. For multinational banks handling financial transactions, fraud detection, real-time analytics, and regulatory workloads, predictable performance and guaranteed reliability are essential.
Dedicated Interconnect offers up to 100 Gbps per connection and can scale even higher by bundling multiple circuits. This bandwidth is necessary for large-scale financial operations that require continuous replication, high-volume transaction processing, and rapid data synchronization across regions.
Unlike VPN options, Dedicated Interconnect traffic never traverses the public internet. Instead, traffic flows through Google’s private backbone, providing far more predictable latency, reduced jitter, and stronger isolation from potential internet-based attacks.
Dynamic BGP routing enables seamless failover. If a circuit goes down, BGP automatically reroutes traffic through another available path. This automation reduces downtime and supports continuous operation across global regions.
Dedicated Interconnect also provides SLA-backed commitments for availability and performance, something VPN-based solutions cannot offer. HA VPN uses the public internet and thus cannot guarantee predictable latency or bandwidth. Cloud VPN with static routes lacks automatic failover. Partner Interconnect with a single VLAN cannot guarantee redundancy unless multiple VLANs and partner capabilities are configured.
Therefore, Dedicated Interconnect is the only option that satisfies all enterprise-grade requirements for private, reliable, and scalable hybrid connectivity.
Question 131
Your company operates a multi-region machine learning model serving platform running on GKE. The platform requires encrypted service-to-service communication using automatic mutual TLS, unified request-level telemetry, distributed tracing, enforced workload identity–based authorization, and advanced traffic control features including weighted routing for gradual model rollouts, retries, circuit breaking, and fault injection. These capabilities must be implemented without modifying existing application code. Which Google Cloud solution provides all these features?
A) Cloud Armor
B) Anthos Service Mesh
C) Cloud Router with Interconnect
D) VPC Firewall Rules with IAM tags
Answer:
B
Explanation:
Anthos Service Mesh is the correct solution because it provides comprehensive service-to-service security, traffic governance, workload identity enforcement, and observability without requiring application code changes. In the context of a multi-region machine learning model–serving platform, the complexity of microservice interactions demands a system capable of automatically enforcing mTLS, identity-based authentication, telemetry collection, and traffic shaping. Anthos Service Mesh is specifically engineered for such requirements and integrates seamlessly with GKE workloads.
To begin, encrypted service-to-service communication using automatic mutual TLS is a core requirement. With Anthos Service Mesh, each microservice’s Envoy sidecar proxy handles mutual TLS automatically. Certificates are provisioned and rotated without manual intervention. This ensures all communication between microservices is encrypted and authenticated using workload identity rather than relying on IP addresses or manual certificate management. Model-serving platforms often rely on sensitive data and proprietary models. Automatic mTLS ensures that all internal communication remains secure even across multiple GKE clusters.
Unified request-level telemetry and distributed tracing are also essential, especially for understanding inference performance across different model-serving stages. Anthos Service Mesh captures metrics automatically at the sidecar proxy. This includes latency measurements between services, error rates, inbound and outbound traffic volume, and detailed traces showing the path a single inference request takes across the system. Distributed tracing is extremely important for machine learning workloads because inference requests often depend on multiple upstream services: feature extraction services, embedding services, metadata retrieval systems, preprocessing layers, and model invocation endpoints. Anthos Service Mesh allows engineers to identify slow requests, diagnose model loading delays, or pinpoint bottlenecks in feature retrieval.
Workload identity–based authorization is another foundational capability of Anthos Service Mesh. In dynamic container environments, microservices frequently scale up and down, move across nodes, or restart. Their IP addresses change frequently, so traditional firewall-based rules do not provide reliable security. Instead, Anthos Service Mesh relies on Kubernetes service accounts associated with workloads. Authorization policies can be defined to restrict which workloads may call other workloads, creating a robust zero-trust communication pattern across regions. For example, a vector embedding service might be allowed to call a model inference service, but a logging service should not be able to call the model trainer. This type of policy granularity is essential for securing machine learning pipelines.
Advanced traffic control features are another requirement of the question. Anthos Service Mesh allows gradual rollouts using weighted traffic routing. This is critical when deploying new machine learning models. Instead of instantly routing all traffic to a new model version, teams can direct only a small percentage to test for regressions or performance degradation. This reduces risk and allows safe rollout of updated models. For example, a new model may achieve better accuracy but exhibit slower performance. With traffic-splitting, teams can observe performance before moving all traffic to the new version.
Retries, timeouts, and circuit breaking are equally important. These features prevent cascading failures caused by slow or failing services. For instance, if the feature store becomes slow, retries with exponential backoff can mitigate transient issues. If a downstream service becomes consistently slow, circuit breaking temporarily halts traffic to prevent overload of upstream callers. Fault injection enables deliberate testing of system resiliency by adding latency or random errors in controlled scenarios.
It is also critical that developers are not required to modify application code. Anthos Service Mesh operates at the sidecar proxy level and transparently intercepts traffic. No changes to application logic are required to enable mTLS, retries, timeout management, tracing, or authorization enforcement. This is essential for large ML platforms where service codebases are diverse and cannot be uniformly updated.
Alternative answers do not meet these requirements. Cloud Armor protects external HTTP endpoints but not internal services. Cloud Router with Interconnect manages hybrid routing but does not enforce identity-based workload security or traffic shaping. VPC Firewall Rules cannot enforce mTLS, identity-based authorization, retries, or distributed tracing.
Anthos Service Mesh is therefore the only Google Cloud technology that meets all the security, observability, and traffic control requirements of a multi-region ML-serving platform.
Question 132
A healthcare research organization stores sensitive genomic datasets in BigQuery and Cloud Storage. To comply with regulatory requirements, access to these datasets must be limited to API requests originating from authorized VPC networks or on-prem sites routed through Interconnect. The organization must prevent data exfiltration to any resource outside its protected environment, even by authorized users. Which Google Cloud feature is required?
A) Private Google Access
B) VPC Service Controls
C) IAM Conditions with location restrictions
D) Cloud VPN tunnels
Answer:
B
Explanation:
VPC Service Controls is the correct answer because it provides a robust security perimeter around sensitive Google-managed services, preventing unauthorized access and data exfiltration. For organizations handling genomic data or other regulated healthcare information, compliance standards require multiple layers of protection beyond IAM-based identity controls.
The first major requirement of the question is that API requests must originate only from authorized VPC networks or on-prem sites routed through Interconnect. IAM alone cannot enforce this, because IAM does not inspect the network origin of requests. VPC Service Controls enforces service perimeters that require API calls to originate from designated networks only. Any request outside the perimeter is denied before IAM authorization is even considered.
The second requirement is preventing data exfiltration. Even if an authorized user or workload inside the perimeter has valid IAM permissions, the organization must ensure that sensitive genomic datasets cannot be copied to external buckets or exported to BigQuery datasets outside the protected environment. VPC Service Controls enforces this by restricting the destination of any data transfer requests. Attempted exports to destinations outside the perimeter are blocked automatically.
This is critical in genomic research environments, where PHI and genetic identifiers cannot be allowed to leave secure control boundaries. VPC Service Controls offers the ability to define both regular service perimeters and more advanced perimeter bridges and access levels when necessary.
Private Google Access (Option A) allows private network access but does not restrict which APIs can be accessed or where data can flow. IAM Conditions (Option C) can restrict access based on the region or IP but cannot prevent cross-project data movement or enforce perimeter boundaries. Cloud VPN (Option D) provides encrypted connectivity but does not enforce API-level security or exfiltration controls.
Thus, VPC Service Controls is the only option fully meeting the regulatory and data control requirements described.
Question 133
A multinational company operates 90 VPC networks and several data centers across different continents. They require a hub-and-spoke hybrid networking architecture that prevents transitive routing, supports automatic BGP route propagation, centralizes topology visibility, and simplifies onboarding of additional VPCs as the environment grows. Which Google Cloud service meets all these requirements?
A) Cloud Router only
B) VPC Peering
C) Network Connectivity Center
D) Shared VPC
Answer:
C
Explanation:
Network Connectivity Center (NCC) is the correct choice because it provides a scalable hub-and-spoke architecture, supports hybrid connectivity, and integrates with Cloud Router for automatic BGP propagation. A company with 90 VPCs cannot rely on traditional connectivity methods without creating operational chaos. Full mesh VPC Peering becomes unmanageable and does not support transitive routing. Shared VPC centralizes network control but does not create a clearly segmented hub-and-spoke routing model and does not incorporate on-prem connectivity management.
NCC allows each VPC and on-prem data center to connect as a spoke to a central hub. Because the architecture is hub-based, no VPC gains transitive access to another VPC unless explicitly defined. This is essential for multinational organizations with business unit separation and regulatory constraints. NCC also supports hybrid connectivity through Interconnect or VPN attachments, making it ideal for environments where on-prem networks must share connectivity with multiple VPCs.
Cloud Router integration enables dynamic BGP routing so that routes automatically propagate across the hub. When a new VPC is added, the routing configuration updates automatically. This dramatically reduces administrative overhead and speeds up onboarding of new networks.
Additionally, NCC provides centralized visibility into the entire hybrid topology. Network administrators can view all spokes, their connectivity status, routing details, and health metrics. This is critical for large organizations with complex hybrid deployments.
VPC Peering does not scale and cannot provide centralized governance or transitive routing. Cloud Router alone provides BGP but not the hub-and-spoke topology. Shared VPC centralizes administration but does not solve cross-VPC and hybrid routing problems at scale.
Thus, NCC is the only comprehensive solution.
Question 134
A global content delivery platform requires a load balancer that uses a single anycast IP, routes users to the closest Google edge location, supports global health checks, provides seamless multi-region failover, terminates TLS at the edge, uses Google’s private backbone for traffic, and supports both HTTP/2 and QUIC. Which 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) TCP Proxy Load Balancer
Answer:
B
Explanation:
The Premium Tier Global External HTTP(S) Load Balancer is the correct solution because it is designed specifically for global applications requiring low latency, worldwide scalability, and advanced protocol support. For a global content delivery platform, the ability to serve users from the nearest Google edge location is essential for reducing latency and improving user experience.
A single anycast IP allows users worldwide to access the same endpoint. Google routes traffic to the closest edge point of presence. TLS is terminated at the edge, reducing the handshake time and offloading encryption from backend services. Once inside Google’s network, traffic travels across Google’s private backbone, ensuring consistent performance, reduced jitter, and resilience against internet congestion.
Global health checks continuously evaluate backend availability across regions. If a region fails, traffic shifts automatically—without DNS changes. This provides true multi-region resilience.
HTTP/2 provides efficient performance for web applications by enabling multiplexing, header compression, and better use of connections. QUIC further enhances performance with faster connection establishment, built-in congestion control, and resilience to packet loss.
Other load balancers cannot meet these requirements. SSL Proxy Load Balancer is global but does not provide full L7 features or QUIC support. Regional HTTP(S) Load Balancer cannot perform cross-region routing. TCP Proxy Load Balancer lacks required L7 features.
Thus, the Premium Tier Global External HTTP(S) Load Balancer is the only correct choice.
Question 135
A global financial organization requires private, low-latency hybrid connectivity for mission-critical applications. The connectivity must avoid the public internet entirely, support high bandwidth (up to 100 Gbps per link), provide redundant circuits backed by SLAs, and use dynamic BGP routing for automatic failover across multiple Google Cloud regions. Which GoogIe Cloud hybrid connectivity option should be deployed?
A) HA VPN
B) Dedicated Interconnect
C) Cloud VPN with static routes
D) Partner Interconnect single VLAN
Answer:
B
Explanation:
Dedicated Interconnect is the correct answer because it provides private, high-capacity, low-latency connectivity between on-prem data centers and Google Cloud. For financial institutions, predictable latency, high throughput, and SLA-backed reliability are mandatory. Dedicated Interconnect meets all these requirements.
Traffic bypasses the public internet entirely. Instead, traffic flows over Google’s private backbone, guaranteeing lower latency, more predictable performance, and stronger security than internet-based VPN options. Dedicated Interconnect supports bandwidth up to 100 Gbps per connection, with even larger capacities achievable by bundling links.
Redundant circuits are provided through physically diverse edge locations. These are backed by SLAs that guarantee availability and performance. For mission-critical financial workloads such as high-frequency trading, fraud detection, or real-time risk modeling, such guarantees are absolutely essential.
Dynamic BGP routing through Cloud Router provides automatic failover. If one link fails, BGP quickly redirects traffic through available alternatives. This minimizes downtime and prevents manual intervention.
HA VPN continues to rely on the public internet and cannot guarantee low latency or high bandwidth. Cloud VPN with static routes does not support dynamic routing or scalability. A single VLAN in Partner Interconnect does not provide redundancy or SLA guarantees unless multiple VLANs and partner capabilities are configured.
Therefore, Dedicated Interconnect is the only hybrid connectivity option meeting all listed requirements.
Question 136
Your organization runs a multi-region, multi-cluster GKE environment for real-time fraud detection. You must implement secure, encrypted, identity-aware service-to-service communication using automatic mutual TLS. You also need traffic shaping capabilities for canary deployments, circuit breaking, fault injection, retries, and detailed request-level telemetry. All of these features must be enforced uniformly across clusters without modifying application code. Which Google Cloud solution best satisfies these requirements?
A) Cloud Armor
B) Anthos Service Mesh
C) Cloud DNS with weighted routing
D) VPC Firewall rules
Answer:
B
Explanation:
Anthos Service Mesh is the correct answer because it provides a comprehensive, centrally managed service mesh platform capable of enforcing encrypted service-to-service communication, identity-based access control, advanced traffic features, and unified observability across multi-cluster GKE environments without requiring developers to modify application code. Fraud detection systems rely on real-time communication between multiple microservices such as ingestion services, feature extraction engines, rule evaluators, model prediction services, and event loggers. Because these services must exchange sensitive financial information, strong enforcement of security policies, predictable traffic behavior, and deep observability are mandatory. Anthos Service Mesh is designed specifically for these kinds of distributed microservice architectures.
The first major requirement in the question is encrypted service-to-service communication enforced uniformly across clusters. Anthos Service Mesh automatically configures mutual TLS between services using Envoy sidecars injected into each workload. This eliminates the need for developers to manually embed TLS logic or manage certificates in the application code. In fraud-detection environments, where communication includes sensitive transaction data, identity-verified, encrypted communication is essential. Anthos Service Mesh automates certificate provisioning, rotation, and revocation based on workload identity, ensuring that communication remains secure even when pods scale up or down or shift between nodes.
Another major requirement is identity-aware authorization. Traditional IP-based access controls are insufficient in highly dynamic Kubernetes environments where pods frequently change IP addresses. Anthos Service Mesh uses workload identity tied to Kubernetes service accounts, providing stable, cryptographic identities for services. This allows fine-grained authorization policies that specify which services are allowed to call others. For example, a feature extraction engine may be allowed to call a risk-scoring model, but not directly call the logging service. Enforcing these identity-based rules strengthens security, particularly in fraud detection ecosystems where access relationships must be strictly controlled.
The question also requires advanced traffic shaping capabilities including weighted routing for canary deployments, retries, circuit breakers, and fault injection. Anthos Service Mesh supports these features natively. Weighted routing allows organizations to roll out updated versions of fraud detection models gradually. This is crucial because even minor model changes can lead to significant false-positive or false-negative rates. By routing only a small portion of traffic to a new model version initially, teams can validate accuracy and stability under real-world load. Timeouts, retries, and circuit breaking help prevent cascading failures in microservices. Fraud detection pipelines must process events with minimal latency, so these controls prevent upstream services from being stalled by slow or failing downstream components. Fault injection allows controlled testing of resiliency scenarios by adding artificial latency or generating error responses, helping teams validate robustness before real outages occur.
Unified telemetry and request-level visibility are also required. Anthos Service Mesh automatically collects detailed metrics including latency, request volume, success rates, error codes, and end-to-end distributed traces. Fraud detection workloads often span multiple microservices; a single transaction may flow through ingestion → feature store → model scoring → rules engine → fraud decisioning → logging. Without distributed tracing, diagnosing slowdowns or failures would become extremely difficult. Anthos Service Mesh creates detailed dependency graphs and tracing spans automatically, enabling deep debugging and performance optimization.
The requirement that none of these features should require application code modifications is critical. Anthos Service Mesh implements all features at the sidecar proxy level. Developers do not need to add tracing libraries, implement TLS logic, or modify service code for traffic shaping. This allows consistent enforcement across all teams and services, regardless of the programming languages used. For organizations with polyglot microservices—common in fraud detection environments—this consistency simplifies compliance and operational governance.
Alternative options cannot satisfy all requirements. Cloud Armor protects external HTTP/S applications but does not secure internal microservice communication or enforce mTLS. Cloud DNS weighted routing allows traffic splitting but lacks service-level observability, retries, or identity-aware policies. VPC Firewall rules offer IP-based filtering but cannot enforce workload identity, mutual TLS, or request-level telemetry.
Therefore, Anthos Service Mesh is the only Google Cloud solution that provides all required features for a secure, observable, reliable, and controlled service-to-service communication architecture for real-time fraud detection.
Question 137
A national healthcare agency stores protected health information (PHI) in Cloud Storage and BigQuery. The agency must enforce policies ensuring that API calls to these services only originate from approved VPC networks or from on-prem networks routed via Interconnect. Even if IAM credentials are compromised, unauthorized users must be prevented from making API requests. Data exfiltration to any resource outside the protected perimeter must also be blocked. Which Google Cloud security feature is required?
A) IAM Conditions
B) VPC Service Controls
C) Private Google Access
D) Cloud VPN tunnels
Answer:
B
Explanation:
VPC Service Controls is the correct answer because it establishes a strong security perimeter around Google Cloud services, ensuring that access to sensitive datasets in BigQuery and Cloud Storage is restricted based on network origin rather than identity alone. Healthcare agencies must comply with strict data protection laws such as HIPAA, which mandate controls not only over who can access PHI but also where those access attempts originate from. VPC Service Controls provides both network-aware access restriction and data exfiltration prevention, which are essential for meeting regulatory requirements.
IAM alone is insufficient because IAM credentials can be compromised through phishing, endpoint malware, or supply-chain vulnerabilities. If credentials are stolen, a malicious actor can access sensitive datasets from an unauthorized network. VPC Service Controls mitigates this risk by enforcing that API requests must originate from within a defined perimeter consisting of approved VPC networks or on-prem environments connected via Interconnect or VPN. Any API call coming from outside the trusted perimeter is blocked before IAM policy evaluation. This means even valid IAM credentials cannot be used to access healthcare datasets from unauthorized networks.
Another major requirement is preventing data exfiltration. A legitimate user within the perimeter could potentially attempt to copy data to an external bucket or export BigQuery tables to a project outside the agency’s control. VPC Service Controls prevents this by enforcing perimeter boundaries at the API level. If a user tries to export PHI to a Cloud Storage bucket in an external project, the operation is blocked automatically. This protects against insider threats, misconfigurations, or compromised workloads.
Private Google Access allows private VPC subnets to access Google APIs without public IPs but does not enforce data perimeter restrictions. IAM Conditions can restrict access based on device attributes or IP ranges but cannot prevent cross-project data movement. Cloud VPN provides encrypted connectivity but does not enforce API-level policies or data exfiltration controls.
VPC Service Controls also integrates with Access Context Manager to define access levels that combine identity and network origin criteria. This allows organizations to define additional conditions such as requiring access from corporate-managed devices. Healthcare agencies often use Access Levels to enforce device compliance requirements in addition to network origin restrictions.
In summary, VPC Service Controls is the only Google Cloud security feature capable of enforcing network-based API access, preventing unauthorized requests when IAM credentials are stolen, and blocking data exfiltration attempts, all of which are essential for handling PHI in compliance with healthcare regulations.
Question 138
A global enterprise with 100 VPCs and multiple on-prem data centers needs a scalable hybrid networking solution. Requirements include a hub-and-spoke architecture, dynamic BGP route propagation, prevention of transitive routing, centralized monitoring of routing relationships, and simplified onboarding for new VPCs and on-prem sites. Which Google Cloud service best meets these needs?
A) Shared VPC
B) Network Connectivity Center
C) VPC Peering
D) Cloud Router only
Answer:
B
Explanation:
Network Connectivity Center (NCC) is the correct answer because it provides a centralized hub-and-spoke hybrid connectivity architecture capable of scaling to hundreds of VPCs and multiple globally distributed on-prem networks. Large enterprises often face challenges managing connectivity when their environment expands beyond a few VPCs. Traditional methods such as VPC Peering quickly become unmanageable, and Shared VPC alone does not solve hybrid connectivity or multi-VPC routing control. NCC is the only Google Cloud solution that centralizes connectivity, integrates dynamic routing, and provides centralized visibility across a global environment.
The hub-and-spoke architecture provided by NCC ensures that VPCs connect only to the hub and not directly to each other. This prevents transitive routing automatically. Transitive routing is a major challenge in multi-VPC architectures because organizations need to maintain segmentation between business units while still enabling connectivity where appropriate. NCC’s hub model gives administrators centralized control over what routing relationships are permitted.
Dynamic BGP route propagation is another requirement. NCC integrates with Cloud Router to propagate routes automatically between spokes. When a new VPC attaches to NCC, its IP ranges are automatically distributed through the hub. Similarly, when on-prem networks advertise routes via Interconnect or VPN, Cloud Router distributes these routes to all attached VPCs. This automated propagation eliminates manual route management and reduces configuration drift.
Centralized monitoring capabilities in NCC allow administrators to see all hybrid attachments, routing relationships, connectivity health, and topology structures in a single interface. This visibility is essential in large enterprises where dozens of teams may own separate VPCs, and hybrid connectivity spans multiple geographic regions.
Simplified onboarding of new VPCs is another critical requirement. With NCC, administrators simply attach the new VPC as a spoke, and routing automatically propagates. In contrast, VPC Peering would require creating dozens of peerings to connect with existing VPCs in a full mesh configuration. Shared VPC centralizes network admin control but does not support a hub-and-spoke topology or hybrid network attachments. Cloud Router alone provides dynamic BGP but does not provide multi-VPC hub-and-spoke capabilities or centralized routing governance.
Therefore, Network Connectivity Center is the only Google Cloud service that fulfills all requirements for scalable, manageable, global hybrid connectivity.
Question 139
A global SaaS platform needs a load balancing solution with a single anycast IP, routing of users to the nearest Google edge point of presence, global health checks, automatic region failover, TLS termination at the edge, HTTP/2 and QUIC support, and intelligent traffic routing over Google’s private backbone. Which Google Cloud load balancer fulfills these requirements?
A) TCP Proxy Load Balancer
B) Global External HTTP(S) Load Balancer (Premium Tier)
C) Regional External HTTP(S) Load Balancer
D) SSL Proxy Load Balancer
Answer:
B
Explanation:
The Premium Tier Global External HTTP(S) Load Balancer is the correct answer because it is designed specifically for globally distributed applications requiring high performance, advanced routing, and worldwide resilience. SaaS platforms rely on the ability to serve users efficiently regardless of location, and this load balancer provides exactly that through its global anycast architecture.
A single anycast IP allows global user access with automatic routing to the nearest Google edge location. This reduces latency and improves responsiveness. Because TLS termination occurs at the edge rather than in backend regions, handshake delays are minimized, improving connection performance, especially for clients in distant geographic regions.
Global health checks ensure that backend services across all configured regions are continuously monitored. If a region becomes unhealthy or overloaded, traffic is automatically rerouted to another available region without requiring DNS changes. This provides seamless failover and high availability.
Support for HTTP/2 and QUIC is essential for modern SaaS applications. HTTP/2 allows multiplexing over a single connection, improving performance and reducing head-of-line blocking. QUIC further enhances performance by reducing handshake time and improving resilience to packet loss, particularly for mobile or unreliable client networks.
The load balancer also routes traffic over Google’s private backbone. This significantly increases reliability compared to routing over the public internet. Google’s backbone provides predictable performance, lower packet loss, and optimized routing paths between global regions.
Other load balancers in the options cannot match these capabilities. The TCP Proxy Load Balancer does not provide full L7 features or QUIC support. The Regional External HTTP(S) Load Balancer is limited to a single region and cannot provide global failover. The SSL Proxy Load Balancer supports global routing but lacks full L7 features and QUIC.
Thus, the Premium Tier Global External HTTP(S) Load Balancer is the only load balancer that satisfies all requirements for a global SaaS platform.
Question 140
A multinational logistics company requires private, high-capacity hybrid connectivity between its on-prem data centers and multiple Google Cloud regions. Requirements include avoiding the public internet entirely, achieving bandwidth up to 100 Gbps per link, ensuring redundancy with SLA-backed availability, and supporting dynamic BGP routing with automatic failover. Which hybrid connectivity option should the company deploy?
A) HA VPN
B) Dedicated Interconnect
C) Cloud VPN with static routes
D) Partner Interconnect single VLAN
Answer:
B
Explanation:
Dedicated Interconnect is the correct answer because it provides the highest performance, lowest latency, and most reliable hybrid connectivity between on-prem environments and Google Cloud. For multinational logistics companies, where real-time data synchronization, inventory tracking, shipment routing, and supply chain optimization rely heavily on fast and predictable connectivity, Dedicated Interconnect is the superior choice.
One major requirement is bypassing the public internet entirely. Dedicated Interconnect creates a physically isolated connection from the customer’s on-premises network to Google’s edge network. This ensures security, consistency, and predictable performance that cannot be guaranteed over the public internet. Many logistics systems depend on real-time updates—such as vehicle telemetry, sensor data, and route optimization algorithms—which require stable network conditions.
The next requirement is bandwidth up to 100 Gbps per link. Dedicated Interconnect supports 10 Gbps and 100 Gbps links, and organizations can aggregate multiple connections for even greater throughput. This capacity is essential in environments that transfer large volumes of telemetry data, mapping information, AI models, analytic results, and ERP synchronization data.
Redundant circuits are a key feature. Dedicated Interconnect provides physically diverse connections across separate Google edge availability domains. If one circuit fails, traffic automatically fails over to the redundant path. These redundant connections come with strict SLAs for uptime and performance, ensuring mission-critical workloads maintain connectivity.
Dynamic BGP routing via Cloud Router allows automatic failover. When a circuit becomes unavailable, BGP immediately reroutes traffic to other available paths without human intervention. This capability is essential for high availability.
HA VPN does not meet the requirements because it relies on the public internet, and its performance cannot match Dedicated Interconnect. Cloud VPN with static routes cannot fail over dynamically and is not designed for high-capacity environments. Partner Interconnect with a single VLAN lacks redundancy unless multiple VLANs are configured and cannot match the performance of Dedicated Interconnect.
Therefore, Dedicated Interconnect is the only hybrid connectivity option meeting all high-capacity, private, SLA-backed, globally distributed requirements for multinational logistics workloads.
