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Question 31
Your organization needs to establish private connectivity between your on-premises data center and Google Cloud. You require a dedicated connection with 10 Gbps bandwidth and want to avoid traffic going over the public internet. Which Google Cloud service should you use?
A) Cloud VPN
B) Cloud Interconnect – Dedicated
C) Cloud NAT
D) Partner Interconnect
Answer: B
Explanation:
Cloud Interconnect Dedicated is the appropriate service for establishing private connectivity between an on-premises data center and Google Cloud with dedicated 10 Gbps bandwidth that avoids the public internet. Dedicated Interconnect provides direct physical connections between your on-premises network and Google’s network through colocation facilities.
Dedicated Interconnect offers high-bandwidth connections ranging from 10 Gbps to 100 Gbps per link, with the ability to provision up to eight links for higher capacity. These connections terminate at Google’s edge points of presence, providing private access to all Google Cloud regions through Google’s private network backbone. Traffic never traverses the public internet, ensuring consistent performance, lower latency, and enhanced security.
The service provides several advantages including predictable network performance, reduced egress costs compared to internet-based connectivity, support for VPC networks and Google Workspace, and the ability to use your own encryption for data in transit. Dedicated Interconnect is ideal for enterprise workloads requiring high throughput, low latency, and reliable connectivity such as large-scale data transfers, database replication, and hybrid cloud architectures.
To use Dedicated Interconnect, your organization must establish a physical connection at a colocation facility where Google has a presence. You provision connections through VLAN attachments that connect to Cloud Routers in your VPC networks, enabling dynamic routing with BGP. The service includes redundancy options with multiple connections across different edge locations for high availability.
Cloud VPN provides encrypted connectivity over the public internet but does not offer dedicated bandwidth or the performance characteristics of Interconnect. VPN is suitable for lower bandwidth requirements and cost-sensitive deployments.
Cloud NAT provides outbound internet connectivity for private instances and does not establish private connectivity to on-premises networks.
Partner Interconnect uses third-party service providers and is suitable when you cannot meet Dedicated Interconnect colocation requirements, but the question specifies wanting a dedicated connection.
Question 32
You need to implement a solution that allows your Google Cloud resources to access the internet while keeping their internal IP addresses private. The resources should be able to initiate outbound connections but not receive inbound connections from the internet. What should you configure?
A) External IP addresses for all instances
B) Cloud NAT
C) Cloud Load Balancing
D) VPC Network Peering
Answer: B
Explanation:
Cloud NAT is the correct solution for allowing Google Cloud resources to access the internet while keeping their internal IP addresses private and preventing inbound connections from the internet. Cloud NAT provides network address translation services that enable instances without external IP addresses to initiate outbound connections to the internet.
Cloud NAT operates at the regional level and works with Cloud Router to provide managed, scalable NAT functionality. When you configure Cloud NAT, you specify which subnets or instances can use it, and Cloud NAT automatically translates the private IP addresses of your instances to one or more external IP addresses for outbound traffic. This translation is stateful, meaning responses to outbound requests are allowed back in, but unsolicited inbound connections are blocked.
The service provides several benefits including enhanced security by hiding internal IP addresses from the internet, reduced need for external IP addresses which lowers costs and conserves IP address space, centralized control over outbound internet access, detailed logging of NAT translations for monitoring and troubleshooting, and automatic scaling to handle traffic volumes without manual intervention.
Cloud NAT supports both automatic and manual external IP address allocation. In automatic mode, Google Cloud allocates IP addresses from a pool, while manual mode lets you specify which external IP addresses to use. You can configure ports per instance to control the number of concurrent connections, and implement allow/deny rules to restrict which instances can use Cloud NAT.
Common use cases include providing internet access for instances that do not need to receive inbound connections, such as backend servers, batch processing nodes, and database replicas, enabling software updates and patch management without exposing instances to inbound internet traffic, and meeting security compliance requirements that mandate private IP addressing.
External IP addresses would expose resources to inbound connections, which contradicts the requirement.
Cloud Load Balancing distributes inbound traffic and does not provide outbound NAT functionality.
VPC Network Peering connects VPC networks privately but does not provide internet access or NAT services.
Question 33
Your company is deploying a multi-tier web application in Google Cloud. You need to ensure that the web tier can communicate with the application tier, but the application tier should not be directly accessible from the internet. How should you configure your network?
A) Place both tiers in the same subnet with firewall rules
B) Place the web tier in a public subnet and application tier in a private subnet with appropriate firewall rules
C) Use separate VPC networks with VPC peering
D) Deploy both tiers with external IP addresses
Answer: B
Explanation:
Placing the web tier in a public subnet and the application tier in a private subnet with appropriate firewall rules is the correct approach for securing a multi-tier web application in Google Cloud. This architecture implements defense in depth by segmenting different application tiers and controlling traffic flow between them.
In Google Cloud VPC networks, subnets themselves are not inherently public or private, but you control accessibility through the assignment of external IP addresses and firewall rules. The web tier instances can be assigned external IP addresses or placed behind a Cloud Load Balancer to handle incoming internet traffic. The application tier instances should not have external IP addresses, making them inaccessible from the internet while still able to communicate with other resources within the VPC.
Firewall rules provide granular control over traffic between tiers. You create ingress rules for the application tier that allow traffic only from the web tier subnet or specific web tier instances, using source IP ranges or service accounts as match criteria. Egress rules control outbound traffic from each tier. Default deny rules should be implemented, with explicit allow rules only for required communication paths.
This configuration provides several security benefits including reduced attack surface by limiting internet-facing components, network segmentation that contains potential breaches, simplified security monitoring with clearly defined traffic patterns, and compliance with security frameworks requiring tier isolation. If the application tier needs internet access for updates or external API calls, you can configure Cloud NAT to provide outbound connectivity without exposing instances to inbound traffic.
Additional security measures include using Internal Load Balancing between tiers for scalability and availability, implementing Private Google Access for accessing Google Cloud services without external IPs, and using VPC Service Controls to define security perimeters around sensitive resources.
Placing both tiers in the same subnet with only firewall rules provides less isolation and makes security management more complex.
Separate VPC networks with peering adds unnecessary complexity for tier separation within the same application.
Question 34
You are designing a hybrid cloud architecture and need to ensure that DNS resolution works seamlessly between your on-premises environment and Google Cloud. On-premises resources should be able to resolve Google Cloud resource names, and Google Cloud resources should resolve on-premises names. What should you implement?
A) Cloud DNS with DNS peering and forwarding zones
B) Only public DNS records
C) Manual host file entries on all instances
D) External DNS service outside Google Cloud
Answer: A
Explanation:
Cloud DNS with DNS peering and forwarding zones is the correct solution for enabling seamless DNS resolution between on-premises environments and Google Cloud in a hybrid architecture. This configuration allows bidirectional name resolution, enabling resources in both environments to resolve each other’s DNS names.
Cloud DNS is Google Cloud’s scalable, reliable, and managed DNS service that supports both public and private DNS zones. For hybrid connectivity, you use Cloud DNS private zones with DNS peering to enable name resolution within Google Cloud, and forwarding zones to direct queries for on-premises domains to your on-premises DNS servers.
The implementation involves several components. First, create Cloud DNS private zones for your Google Cloud resources, which provide name resolution within your VPC networks. Configure DNS peering between VPC networks if your architecture spans multiple VPCs, allowing them to share DNS resolution. Create forwarding zones that specify on-premises domain names and forward queries for those domains to your on-premises DNS servers through Cloud VPN or Cloud Interconnect connections.
For the reverse direction, configure your on-premises DNS servers to forward queries for Google Cloud domains to Cloud DNS resolvers. Alternatively, use conditional forwarding to send only specific domain queries to Cloud DNS. This bidirectional forwarding ensures that applications in either environment can discover and connect to resources in the other environment using DNS names rather than IP addresses.
Benefits of this approach include automatic DNS updates when resources change, centralized DNS management, low latency name resolution, high availability through Google’s infrastructure, and support for DNSSEC for enhanced security. Cloud DNS integrates with Cloud Logging and Cloud Monitoring for visibility into DNS queries and performance.
Public DNS records only work for publicly accessible resources and do not provide resolution for private resources.
Manual host file entries are not scalable, difficult to maintain, and become outdated quickly in dynamic cloud environments.
External DNS services add complexity, latency, and potential single points of failure.
Question 35
Your organization needs to implement a solution that provides SSL/TLS termination, global load balancing, and content-based routing for your web applications hosted across multiple regions. Which Google Cloud service should you use?
A) Network Load Balancer
B) Internal HTTP(S) Load Balancer
C) External HTTP(S) Load Balancer
D) TCP Proxy Load Balancer
Answer: C
Explanation:
External HTTP(S) Load Balancer is the correct service for providing SSL/TLS termination, global load balancing, and content-based routing for web applications hosted across multiple regions. This is Google Cloud’s premium Layer 7 load balancing solution that distributes traffic across backends globally.
The External HTTP(S) Load Balancer operates at the application layer and provides intelligent traffic distribution based on HTTP and HTTPS request attributes. It offers global load balancing through a single anycast IP address that automatically routes users to the nearest available backend based on proximity, capacity, and health. This ensures optimal performance and high availability for globally distributed applications.
Key features include SSL/TLS termination at the load balancer, offloading encryption processing from backend instances, support for Google-managed or custom SSL certificates, HTTP/2 and QUIC protocol support, URL-based content routing to different backend services, host and path-based routing rules, Cloud CDN integration for caching static content at edge locations, Cloud Armor integration for DDoS protection and WAF capabilities, and connection draining for graceful instance shutdown.
Content-based routing allows you to define URL maps that route requests to different backend services based on request attributes. For example, you can route requests for example.com/api/ to an API backend service, requests for example.com/images/ to a static content backend, and requests for example.com/app/ to an application backend. This enables microservices architectures with different scaling and configuration requirements for different application components.
The load balancer automatically scales to handle traffic spikes without pre-warming and provides built-in health checking to route traffic only to healthy backends. It integrates with Cloud Monitoring for observability and supports advanced traffic management features like traffic splitting for canary deployments and A/B testing.
Network Load Balancer operates at Layer 4 and does not provide SSL termination or content-based routing capabilities.
Internal HTTP(S) Load Balancer is for private, internal traffic within VPC networks and does not provide global load balancing for internet-facing applications.
Question 36
You need to allow private communication between two VPC networks in different Google Cloud projects without using external IP addresses. Both networks have non-overlapping IP ranges. What is the most appropriate solution?
A) Cloud VPN between the networks
B) VPC Network Peering
C) Shared VPC
D) Cloud Interconnect
Answer: B
Explanation:
VPC Network Peering is the most appropriate solution for allowing private communication between two VPC networks in different Google Cloud projects with non-overlapping IP ranges. VPC Network Peering establishes a direct private connection between VPC networks, enabling resources in peered networks to communicate using internal IP addresses.
VPC Network Peering works by creating a peering connection that allows IP address routing between two VPC networks, whether they are in the same project, different projects, or even different organizations. Once peering is established, instances in either network can communicate as if they were in the same network, with traffic remaining within Google’s network infrastructure without traversing the public internet.
The service provides several advantages including low latency and high throughput because traffic uses Google’s internal network, no egress charges for traffic between peered networks making it cost-effective, simplified network architecture without need for gateways or VPN devices, support for transitive peering when configured properly, and preservation of network isolation while enabling controlled connectivity.
Requirements for VPC Network Peering include non-overlapping IP address ranges between the networks, which the question confirms is met, administrative access to both VPC networks to establish the bidirectional peering relationship, and compatible firewall rules to allow desired traffic. Each network maintains its own firewall rules, routes, and policies, providing granular control over which resources can communicate.
VPC Network Peering is ideal for scenarios like connecting application tiers across projects, enabling shared services accessible from multiple VPCs, facilitating collaboration between different teams or business units with separate projects, and building hub-and-spoke network topologies.
Cloud VPN could connect the networks but adds unnecessary complexity, latency, and cost compared to VPC Peering for intra-Google Cloud connectivity.
Shared VPC is for sharing a single VPC network across multiple projects, not connecting separate VPC networks.
Cloud Interconnect is for connecting on-premises networks to Google Cloud, not for connecting VPC networks.
Question 37
Your company requires that all egress traffic from Google Cloud to the internet be routed through a centralized security appliance for inspection before leaving the network. How should you configure this?
A) Use Cloud NAT with centralized external IPs
B) Implement a custom route with next hop as a security appliance instance
C) Configure VPC firewall rules to route traffic
D) Use Cloud VPN for egress traffic
Answer: B
Explanation:
Implementing a custom route with next hop as a security appliance instance is the correct approach for routing all egress traffic through a centralized security appliance for inspection. This configuration uses custom static routes to override default routing behavior and direct traffic to network security appliances.
Custom routes in Google Cloud allow you to define specific routing paths for traffic destined to particular IP ranges. To implement centralized egress inspection, you create a custom route with a destination of 0.0.0.0/0 for all internet-bound traffic and set the next hop to an instance or internal load balancer fronting your security appliances. The custom route has higher priority than the default internet route, ensuring all matching traffic flows through your security infrastructure.
The security appliance instances must be configured to act as network gateways, typically requiring IP forwarding enabled, appropriate routing within the appliance operating system, and network interfaces in relevant subnets. For high availability, deploy multiple security appliances across zones behind an internal TCP/UDP load balancer, which serves as the next hop in your custom route.
This architecture enables several security capabilities including deep packet inspection for malware and threats, data loss prevention by scanning outbound data, URL filtering and content inspection, logging and audit trails of all internet-bound traffic, and enforcement of organizational policies on egress traffic. The security appliances can perform SSL inspection, intrusion prevention, and other advanced security functions.
Implementation considerations include ensuring security appliances can handle your traffic volume, configuring health checks for automatic failover, managing session affinity if required by security appliances, and monitoring appliance performance and capacity. You can use third-party security appliances from Google Cloud Marketplace or deploy custom solutions.
Cloud NAT provides network address translation but does not inspect traffic or route through security appliances.
VPC firewall rules control traffic allow/deny decisions but cannot route traffic to specific instances for inspection.
Question 38
You are designing a network architecture where multiple VPC networks need to access a centralized service hosted in a separate VPC. You want to minimize the number of peering connections. What network topology should you implement?
A) Full mesh VPC peering between all networks
B) Hub-and-spoke topology with the service VPC as the hub
C) Separate Shared VPC for each network
D) Independent VPCs with Cloud VPN connections
Answer: B
Explanation:
A hub-and-spoke topology with the service VPC as the hub is the most efficient network architecture for enabling multiple VPC networks to access centralized services while minimizing peering connections. This design establishes the service VPC as the central hub with spoke VPCs peering directly to it, eliminating the need for full mesh connectivity.
In a hub-and-spoke topology, the hub VPC hosts shared services that all spoke VPCs need to access, such as shared databases, APIs, monitoring tools, or security services. Each spoke VPC establishes a single VPC peering connection to the hub, providing access to hub resources without requiring direct connectivity between spoke networks. This reduces the number of peering connections from N(N-1)/2 in a full mesh to N-1 connections for N networks.
The architecture provides several benefits including simplified network management with centralized service hosting, reduced peering connection overhead, easier addition of new spoke VPCs requiring only one new peering connection, centralized security controls in the hub for shared services, and cost efficiency by minimizing cross-VPC traffic and management overhead.
Important considerations include that standard VPC peering is non-transitive, meaning spoke VPCs cannot communicate with each other through the hub by default. If inter-spoke communication is required, you must implement additional solutions or configure the hub as a network virtual appliance with custom routing. For transitive access to certain services, you can export custom routes from the hub that are imported by spokes.
Common use cases include shared services like centralized logging and monitoring, common database instances, internal APIs and microservices, security scanning services, and CI/CD infrastructure. The topology works well when spoke VPCs are isolated workloads or business units that only need access to common services, not to each other.
Full mesh peering scales poorly and requires N(N-1)/2 connections, creating management complexity as networks grow.
Shared VPC is for sharing a single VPC across projects, not connecting multiple VPCs.
Question 39
Your application requires a load balancer that can handle TCP traffic on non-standard ports and needs to preserve client IP addresses. The application backend is deployed across multiple zones within a single region. Which load balancer should you use?
A) External HTTP(S) Load Balancer
B) External Network Load Balancer
C) Internal TCP/UDP Load Balancer
D) SSL Proxy Load Balancer
Answer: B
Explanation:
External Network Load Balancer is the correct choice for handling TCP traffic on non-standard ports while preserving client IP addresses for applications deployed across multiple zones within a region. This is a Layer 4 load balancer that distributes traffic based on IP protocol data including port and protocol.
The External Network Load Balancer operates as a pass-through load balancer, forwarding traffic directly to backend instances without proxying connections. This architecture preserves the original client IP address in packet headers, allowing backend instances to see the actual source IP of incoming connections. This capability is crucial for applications that require client IP information for logging, analytics, access control, or compliance purposes.
The load balancer supports TCP, UDP, and other IP protocols on any port, making it suitable for non-standard port requirements. It provides regional load balancing within a single region, distributing traffic across backends in multiple zones for high availability. Traffic distribution uses a 5-tuple hash including source IP, source port, destination IP, destination port, and protocol, ensuring that packets from the same connection consistently reach the same backend.
Key features include ultra-low latency because traffic is not proxied, high throughput suitable for demanding applications, support for connection draining during maintenance, configurable session affinity for sticky sessions, health checking to route traffic only to healthy backends, and automatic scaling without pre-warming requirements. The load balancer is deployed as a regional resource with automatic failover across zones.
Use cases include gaming servers requiring client IP visibility, IoT device communications, legacy applications on non-standard ports, database connections where client IP must be preserved, and applications with strict latency requirements where proxy overhead cannot be tolerated.
External HTTP(S) Load Balancer is Layer 7, does not preserve client IPs by default, and is designed for HTTP/HTTPS traffic.
Internal TCP/UDP Load Balancer is for private internal traffic, not external internet-facing applications.
SSL Proxy Load Balancer terminates SSL connections and does not preserve original client IPs.
Question 40
You need to implement a solution that allows your Google Cloud instances to access Google APIs and services like Cloud Storage and BigQuery without using external IP addresses or going through the internet. What should you configure?
A) Cloud NAT
B) Private Google Access
C) VPC Service Controls
D) Cloud VPN to Google services
Answer: B
Explanation:
Private Google Access is the correct solution for allowing Google Cloud instances without external IP addresses to access Google APIs and services like Cloud Storage and BigQuery without traversing the internet. This feature enables private connectivity to Google services through Google’s internal network.
Private Google Access is configured at the subnet level within VPC networks. When enabled for a subnet, instances in that subnet with only internal IP addresses can reach the external IP addresses of Google APIs and services. Traffic from these instances to Google services uses Google’s private network infrastructure, never leaving Google’s network or traversing the public internet.
The feature provides several advantages including enhanced security by eliminating the need for external IP addresses on instances that only need to access Google services, reduced attack surface by keeping instances private, cost savings by avoiding egress charges for internet traffic, improved network performance with lower latency through Google’s private network, and simplified architecture without requiring NAT gateways for Google service access.
To implement Private Google Access, enable it on relevant subnets through the VPC network configuration. Ensure your firewall rules allow egress traffic to the IP ranges used by Google APIs. Configure your instances to use Google’s private access endpoints, or use Private Service Connect for more advanced scenarios. DNS resolution for Google services automatically returns IP addresses reachable through Private Google Access.
Common use cases include backend servers accessing Cloud Storage for data processing, instances querying BigQuery for analytics, applications calling Cloud APIs for various services, batch processing jobs writing to Cloud Storage, and database instances backing up to Cloud Storage. The feature is essential for implementing zero-trust security models where instances do not have internet access.
Cloud NAT provides general internet access but is not specifically designed for accessing Google services privately.
VPC Service Controls provide security perimeters but do not enable private access to Google services for instances without external IPs.
Question 41
Your organization is migrating a large application to Google Cloud and needs to ensure minimal downtime during the migration. You want to gradually shift traffic from on-premises to Google Cloud. Which approach should you use?
A) DNS-based traffic splitting with Cloud DNS
B) Implement Cloud CDN for caching
C) Use Cloud VPN for all traffic
D) Deploy a third-party load balancer
Answer: A
Explanation:
DNS-based traffic splitting with Cloud DNS is the most appropriate approach for gradually shifting traffic from on-premises to Google Cloud during a migration with minimal downtime. This method allows controlled, incremental migration of users to the cloud environment while maintaining the ability to quickly roll back if issues arise.
Cloud DNS supports weighted routing policies that enable traffic distribution across multiple endpoints based on configured weights. You configure DNS records that return both on-premises and Google Cloud IP addresses with assigned weights controlling the percentage of users directed to each location. For example, you might start with 90% on-premises and 10% cloud, gradually increasing the cloud percentage as you gain confidence in the migrated application.
The implementation process involves configuring Cloud DNS with multiple resource record sets for the same hostname, assigning weights to control traffic distribution, monitoring application performance and errors in both environments, gradually adjusting weights to shift more traffic to cloud, and retaining the ability to quickly revert by changing DNS weights if problems occur. DNS TTL values should be set low during migration to ensure changes propagate quickly.
This approach provides several benefits including gradual user migration reducing risk, ability to validate cloud deployment with real production traffic before full migration, easy rollback capability by adjusting DNS weights, minimal infrastructure changes required as clients use standard DNS resolution, and flexibility to hold certain user segments on-premises longer if needed for compliance or technical reasons.
Considerations include DNS caching by clients and resolvers potentially causing gradual weight changes to take effect slowly, monitoring both environments during the transition period, ensuring database synchronization if using shared data, and planning for the period when traffic is split between environments.
Cloud CDN provides caching and edge delivery but does not enable gradual traffic migration between environments.
Cloud VPN provides connectivity but does not control traffic distribution between on-premises and cloud.
Third-party load balancers add complexity and cost without advantages over native Google Cloud solutions for this use case.
Question 42
You need to implement a network security solution that provides DDoS protection and WAF capabilities for your application hosted behind an External HTTP(S) Load Balancer. Which Google Cloud service should you configure?
A) VPC firewall rules
B) Cloud Armor
C) Identity-Aware Proxy
D) VPC Service Controls
Answer: B
Explanation:
Cloud Armor is the correct service for providing DDoS protection and Web Application Firewall capabilities for applications hosted behind External HTTP(S) Load Balancers. Cloud Armor is Google Cloud’s managed security service that defends applications from attacks at the edge of Google’s network.
Cloud Armor provides multi-layered defense against distributed denial-of-service attacks including volumetric attacks, protocol attacks, and application-layer attacks. It leverages Google’s global infrastructure to absorb and mitigate attacks before they reach your application backends. The service scales automatically to handle massive attack volumes, providing protection without performance degradation for legitimate traffic.
The WAF capabilities enable you to create custom security policies with rules that filter traffic based on various attributes including IP addresses and ranges, geographic location, request headers, HTTP methods, URLs and query parameters, and sophisticated layer 7 filtering conditions. Cloud Armor uses Google’s threat intelligence to provide preconfigured rules protecting against common vulnerabilities like SQL injection, cross-site scripting, and other OWASP Top 10 threats.
Security policies are created and attached to backend services of External HTTP(S) Load Balancers. Each policy contains rules with match conditions and actions including allow, deny with specific HTTP response codes, rate limiting, or redirect. Rules are evaluated in priority order, and adaptive protection features use machine learning to detect and mitigate sophisticated attacks automatically.
Additional features include preview mode to test rules without enforcing them, detailed logging to Cloud Logging for security analysis, integration with Cloud Monitoring for alerting and dashboards, rate limiting to prevent abuse, named IP lists for managing allow/deny lists, and the ability to create custom rules tailored to your application security requirements.
VPC firewall rules operate at the network layer and do not provide DDoS protection or WAF capabilities for application-layer attacks.
Identity-Aware Proxy provides identity-based access control but not DDoS protection or WAF functionality.
VPC Service Controls create security perimeters around resources but do not provide DDoS or WAF protection.
Question 43
Your company has strict data residency requirements stating that certain data must not leave a specific geographic region. How can you ensure network traffic for compliance-sensitive workloads remains within the required region?
A) Use VPC firewall rules to block inter-region traffic
B) Configure custom routes with regional destinations only
C) Deploy resources in the required region and configure VPC Service Controls with perimeter boundaries
D) Use Cloud VPN to isolate regional traffic
Answer: C
Explanation:
Deploying resources in the required region and configuring VPC Service Controls with perimeter boundaries is the comprehensive solution for ensuring network traffic and data remain within required geographic regions to meet data residency compliance requirements. This approach combines resource placement with security perimeter enforcement.
VPC Service Controls allows you to define security perimeters around Google Cloud resources, restricting access to resources and preventing data exfiltration. When configured with regional boundaries, service perimeters ensure that data accessed by services within the perimeter cannot be copied to resources outside the perimeter, including resources in different regions.
The implementation involves several components. First, deploy all compliance-sensitive workloads exclusively in the required region, ensuring compute instances, storage buckets, databases, and other resources reside in compliant locations. Second, create VPC Service Controls perimeters encompassing these regional resources. Third, configure ingress and egress policies that restrict data access to approved sources and destinations within the region. Fourth, enforce organizational policy constraints preventing resource creation outside allowed regions.
VPC Service Controls provides protection against data exfiltration through several mechanisms including preventing copying of data to storage outside the perimeter, blocking API calls that would move data out of region, restricting service-to-service communication to within the perimeter, and providing detailed audit logs of all access attempts. The service works at the API level, creating a security boundary around Google Cloud services regardless of network paths.
Additional compliance measures include using organization policies to restrict resource location, implementing IAM policies that limit who can create resources in different regions, enabling Private Google Access to prevent traffic from leaving Google’s network, monitoring VPC flow logs for unexpected traffic patterns, and conducting regular audits of resource locations and data flows.
VPC firewall rules control traffic at the network layer but cannot comprehensively enforce data residency requirements or prevent data copying through APIs.
Custom routes control traffic paths but do not prevent data exfiltration or enforce comprehensive regional boundaries.
Question 44
You need to monitor and log all network traffic between VPC subnets for security analysis and compliance. The solution should capture source, destination, protocol, and port information. What should you enable?
A) Cloud Logging for firewall rules
B) VPC Flow Logs
C) Packet Mirroring
D) Cloud Trace
Answer: B
Explanation:
VPC Flow Logs is the correct solution for monitoring and logging network traffic between VPC subnets to capture source, destination, protocol, and port information for security analysis and compliance. VPC Flow Logs records samples of network flows sent from and received by VM instances, enabling network monitoring, forensics, security analysis, and expense optimization.
VPC Flow Logs captures information about IP traffic going to and from network interfaces in your VPC networks. Each log entry contains details including source and destination IP addresses, source and destination ports, protocol type, number of packets and bytes, timestamp information, geographic information, and VPC network details. Logs are aggregated at intervals and exported to Cloud Logging where they can be viewed, filtered, and analyzed.
Configuration is done at the subnet level, allowing granular control over which network traffic is logged. You can enable flow logs for all subnets requiring monitoring, configure sampling rates to balance between visibility and log volume, set aggregation intervals to control log frequency, and include or exclude specific metadata fields based on your analysis needs.
Use cases for VPC Flow Logs include security analysis to detect anomalous traffic patterns, network forensics to investigate security incidents, compliance reporting demonstrating network activity monitoring, troubleshooting connectivity issues between resources, understanding traffic patterns for capacity planning, identifying sources of unexpected traffic, and optimizing network costs by understanding traffic volumes.
Integration with Cloud Logging enables powerful analysis capabilities including querying logs using the logs explorer, creating log-based metrics for monitoring, setting up alerts for suspicious traffic patterns, exporting logs to BigQuery for advanced analysis, and using log sinks to route logs to Cloud Storage for long-term retention.
Cloud Logging for firewall rules logs rule hit information but does not capture comprehensive flow data.
Packet Mirroring captures complete packets but is more resource-intensive and designed for deep packet inspection rather than general flow monitoring.
Cloud Trace is for distributed tracing of application requests, not network traffic logging.
Question 45
Your application requires ultra-low latency communication between compute instances and needs to maximize network throughput. The instances are deployed within a single zone. What network optimization should you implement?
A) Deploy instances across multiple zones for redundancy
B) Enable Tier-1 networking for all instances
C) Place instances in a sole-tenant node group
D) Use compact placement policies
Answer: D
Explanation:
Using compact placement policies is the correct approach for maximizing network performance and achieving ultra-low latency communication between compute instances deployed within a single zone. Compact placement policies instruct Google Cloud to place VM instances physically close together in the data center infrastructure, minimizing network latency.
Compact placement policies work by creating a placement policy resource that you then apply when creating instance groups or individual instances. When instances are created with a compact placement policy, Google Cloud places them in close physical proximity within the same data center zone, typically within the same rack or nearby racks. This physical proximity reduces network latency to the lowest possible levels, often achieving single-digit microsecond latencies between instances.
The placement policy provides several benefits for performance-sensitive applications including significantly reduced network latency between instances, higher network bandwidth between placed instances, more predictable network performance with less variance, reduced packet loss, and optimal performance for tightly coupled parallel computing workloads. These benefits are crucial for applications like high-performance computing, financial trading systems, real-time analytics, and distributed databases requiring tight synchronization.
Configuration involves creating a compact placement policy resource specifying the region and zone, then referencing this policy when creating managed instance groups or individual instances. All instances in the group are placed according to the policy. The policy ensures new instances added to the group maintain the compact placement characteristics.
Considerations include that compact placement may reduce overall availability because instances are physically close, making them susceptible to localized failures. Therefore, compact placement is typically used for performance-critical workloads where ultra-low latency outweighs availability concerns, or in combination with cross-zone replication for workloads requiring both performance and availability.
Deploying across multiple zones increases availability but increases latency, contradicting the ultra-low latency requirement.
Tier-1 networking refers to Premium network tier for internet traffic, not for instance-to-instance communication.
Sole-tenant nodes provide dedicated hardware but do not specifically optimize instance placement for low latency.