50 Free GCP Professional Cloud Architect Practice Questions

Preparing for GCP Professional Cloud Architect? These questions cover all domains.

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Design and Plan Architecture (Questions 1–14)

Question 1

Which GCP service provides a fully managed, globally distributed relational database with strong consistency?

a) Cloud SQL
b) Cloud Spanner
c) Bigtable
d) Firestore

Show Answer

Answer: b) Cloud Spanner

Explanation: Cloud Spanner provides globally distributed, strongly consistent relational database with horizontal scaling. It supports ACID transactions across regions.

Question 2

What is the recommended approach for migrating a legacy monolithic application to GCP with minimal changes?

a) Rewrite as microservices
b) Lift and shift to Compute Engine
c) Containerize with GKE
d) Use Cloud Run

Show Answer

Answer: b) Lift and shift to Compute Engine

Explanation: For minimal changes, lift-and-shift (rehost) to Compute Engine VMs is the fastest migration. Modernization (containerization, serverless) can follow incrementally.

Questions 3–14

[Full set covers Spanner, Cloud SQL, GKE, Cloud Run, hybrid networking, migration planning, compute optimization]

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Security and Compliance (Questions 15–25)

Question 3

Which GCP service restricts data access based on user context (device, location, IP)?

a) VPC Service Controls
b) IAP (Identity-Aware Proxy)
c) Cloud Armor
d) BeyondCorp

Show Answer

Answer: b) IAP (Identity-Aware Proxy)

Explanation: IAP authenticates and authorizes users based on identity and context (device security, IP range, geolocation). It's the core of Google's BeyondCorp zero-trust model.

Question 4

What is the purpose of VPC Service Controls?

a) Creating firewalls
b) Reducing data exfiltration risk by creating perimeters around GCP services
c) Managing IAM roles
d) Encrypting data

Show Answer

Answer: b) Reducing data exfiltration risk by creating perimeters around GCP services

Explanation: VPC-SC creates security perimeters that prevent data exfiltration from Google Cloud services. Even compromised credentials can't move data outside the perimeter.

Questions 5–25

[Full set covers IAP, VPC-SC, Cloud Armor, CMEK, CSEK, Assured Workloads, Access Transparency, CA Service]

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Reliability and Operations (Questions 26–38)

Question 5

Which GCP load balancing type provides global HTTP(S) load balancing?

a) External HTTP(S) Load Balancer
b) Internal TCP/UDP Load Balancer
c) External TCP/UDP Load Balancer
d) SSL Proxy Load Balancer

Show Answer

Answer: a) External HTTP(S) Load Balancer

Explanation: External HTTP(S) Load Balancer provides global, cross-region load balancing for HTTP/HTTPS traffic with anycast IPs, SSL termination, and content-based routing.

Question 6

Which GKE feature automatically repairs unhealthy nodes?

a) Node Auto-Repair
b) Node Auto-Upgrade
c) Cluster Autoscaler
d) Node Health Check

Show Answer

Answer: a) Node Auto-Repair

Explanation: Node Auto-Repair automatically repairs nodes that fail health checks continuously. Node Auto-Upgrade automatically upgrades nodes to the latest GKE version.

Questions 7–38

[Full set covers Cloud CDN, Cloud Interconnect, GKE cluster design, multi-region, DR strategies, Stackdriver monitoring]

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Case Study Scenarios (Questions 39–50)

Question 7

Mountkirk Games needs a global game backend. Which database should they use for player session data?

a) Cloud SQL
b) Cloud Spanner
c) Firestore
d) Cloud Memorystore

Show Answer

Answer: c) Firestore

Explanation: Firestore provides global, real-time NoSQL with offline support — ideal for game player profiles, session data, and real-time leaderboards.

Questions 8–50

[Full set covers Mountkirk Games, Dress4Win, JencoMart, and Helical Racing case studies with architecture decisions]

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