Google Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer Practice Exam
Preparing for the Google Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer Exam requires a deep understanding of Google Cloud Platform’s tools, DevOps best practices, and scalable infrastructure management. At Exam Sage, we provide a comprehensive practice exam designed to help you master the knowledge and skills necessary to pass this challenging certification with confidence.
What is the Google Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer Exam?
The Google Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer certification validates your ability to efficiently develop, deploy, and maintain applications on Google Cloud using DevOps principles. This exam focuses on your expertise in continuous delivery, service monitoring, incident response, and optimizing service performance. Passing this exam proves you can implement reliable and scalable solutions that support rapid development cycles and robust operations on GCP.
What You Will Learn
Our practice exam covers all essential domains tested by Google, ensuring you build proficiency in key areas such as:
Continuous Integration and Continuous Delivery (CI/CD): Understand how to set up automated pipelines using Cloud Build, Cloud Source Repositories, and GKE for seamless deployment.
Service Monitoring and Incident Response: Learn to use Cloud Monitoring, Cloud Logging, and Cloud Trace for effective troubleshooting and maintaining service health.
Infrastructure as Code: Gain experience with Terraform, Deployment Manager, and Kubernetes manifests to provision and manage infrastructure in a repeatable, version-controlled way.
Security and Compliance: Master IAM roles, Binary Authorization, Secret Manager, and network policies to secure cloud environments and control access.
Operational Excellence: Explore best practices in scaling, rolling updates, blue/green deployments, canary releases, and SLO/SLA management to ensure reliability.
Exam Topics Covered
Our Google Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer Practice Test includes over 380 meticulously crafted multiple-choice questions with detailed explanations. These questions mirror the complexity and format of the actual exam, covering:
Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) cluster management
Automated CI/CD pipelines with Cloud Build and Container Registry
Monitoring, logging, and alerting strategies with Cloud Monitoring and Cloud Logging
Incident management and root cause analysis
Security best practices including IAM, Secret Manager, and Binary Authorization
Infrastructure provisioning using Infrastructure as Code tools
Deployment strategies including blue/green and canary deployments
Cost optimization and operational metrics
Why Choose Exam Sage for This Exam?
Exam Sage is your trusted partner in exam preparation. Our practice tests are created by experienced cloud professionals who understand the demands of the Google Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer certification. Each question is designed to challenge your knowledge and improve your problem-solving skills, accompanied by clear, concise explanations to reinforce learning.
With Exam Sage, you get:
Up-to-date, relevant questions aligned with Google’s latest exam guide
Detailed answer explanations to deepen your understanding
Flexible online access to practice anytime, anywhere
A proven way to boost your confidence and readiness for exam day
Start your journey to becoming a certified Google Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer with Exam Sage. Prepare smart, practice thoroughly, and succeed with confidence.
Sample Questions and Answers
1. Which Google Cloud service is best suited to automate deployments in a continuous delivery pipeline for Kubernetes workloads?
A) Cloud Functions
B) Cloud Build
C) App Engine
D) Cloud Storage
Answer: B) Cloud Build
Explanation: Cloud Build automates building, testing, and deploying containerized applications and is commonly used in CI/CD pipelines for Kubernetes on GCP.
2. What is the primary purpose of a Service Level Objective (SLO) in Site Reliability Engineering?
A) To define the maximum budget for cloud resources
B) To set a target level of service availability or reliability
C) To monitor the number of active users
D) To configure access control policies
Answer: B) To set a target level of service availability or reliability
Explanation: SLOs define measurable targets (e.g., 99.9% uptime) to guide reliability goals and operational expectations.
3. In Google Cloud, which tool allows you to implement Infrastructure as Code for your environment?
A) Cloud Deployment Manager
B) Cloud Run
C) Cloud Spanner
D) Cloud Scheduler
Answer: A) Cloud Deployment Manager
Explanation: Deployment Manager lets you specify resources in YAML or Python templates to automate infrastructure provisioning.
4. Which monitoring tool should you use to set alerts based on logs generated by your Kubernetes pods in GKE?
A) Cloud Logging
B) Cloud Functions
C) Cloud Monitoring
D) Cloud Trace
Answer: C) Cloud Monitoring
Explanation: Cloud Monitoring integrates with Cloud Logging to create alerting policies based on metrics or log-based metrics.
5. You want to reduce deployment risk by gradually rolling out new versions of your application on GKE. Which deployment strategy supports this?
A) Blue-green deployment
B) Canary deployment
C) Recreate deployment
D) Rolling update deployment
Answer: B) Canary deployment
Explanation: Canary deployments expose a new version to a small subset of users first to monitor performance before full rollout.
6. What is the purpose of using Cloud Build triggers in a DevOps pipeline?
A) To manually start a build process
B) To automatically start builds in response to source code changes
C) To stop builds that are running too long
D) To monitor deployment status
Answer: B) To automatically start builds in response to source code changes
Explanation: Triggers automate builds when code is pushed or pull requests are created in repositories.
7. Which Google Cloud service provides a managed environment for running containerized microservices with automatic scaling?
A) Compute Engine
B) Cloud Run
C) Cloud Storage
D) App Engine Standard
Answer: B) Cloud Run
Explanation: Cloud Run is a fully managed compute platform that runs stateless containers with automatic scaling.
8. What is a key benefit of using Managed Instance Groups in Google Cloud for your application backend?
A) Manual scaling
B) Automatic healing and auto-scaling
C) Local data storage
D) Serverless deployment
Answer: B) Automatic healing and auto-scaling
Explanation: Managed Instance Groups automatically recreate failed instances and scale based on load.
9. When configuring alerting policies in Cloud Monitoring, what is an important consideration for minimizing alert fatigue?
A) Set alerts on every metric available
B) Set thresholds that correspond to actionable conditions only
C) Disable alerts during business hours
D) Notify only the DevOps manager
Answer: B) Set thresholds that correspond to actionable conditions only
Explanation: Alert fatigue occurs if too many alerts fire; setting meaningful thresholds helps focus on real issues.
10. Which principle is central to Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) in Google Cloud?
A) Frequent manual intervention
B) Automate to reduce toil
C) Avoid service-level objectives
D) Disable monitoring during deployments
Answer: B) Automate to reduce toil
Explanation: SRE focuses on automation to minimize repetitive manual work (toil) and increase reliability.
11. Which Google Cloud product helps trace the latency of requests in a distributed system?
A) Cloud Trace
B) Cloud Monitoring
C) Cloud Scheduler
D) Cloud Pub/Sub
Answer: A) Cloud Trace
Explanation: Cloud Trace collects latency data from applications to help diagnose performance bottlenecks.
12. To securely store and manage sensitive API keys and secrets for your applications running on GKE, which service should you use?
A) Cloud Storage
B) Cloud KMS
C) Secret Manager
D) Cloud SQL
Answer: C) Secret Manager
Explanation: Secret Manager allows you to securely store, access, and manage secrets like API keys.
13. What is the advantage of using Infrastructure as Code (IaC) in DevOps practices on GCP?
A) It eliminates the need for documentation
B) It provides a manual way to configure resources
C) It ensures environment consistency and repeatability
D) It requires fewer permissions
Answer: C) It ensures environment consistency and repeatability
Explanation: IaC enables automated and consistent resource provisioning, reducing human error.
14. Which Google Cloud product would you use to implement a Pub/Sub messaging pattern in your microservices architecture?
A) Cloud Storage
B) Cloud Pub/Sub
C) Cloud Scheduler
D) Cloud Build
Answer: B) Cloud Pub/Sub
Explanation: Cloud Pub/Sub provides asynchronous messaging between independent services.
15. In a CI/CD pipeline, what is the primary role of unit testing?
A) To verify the entire system integration
B) To validate individual code components
C) To deploy the application to production
D) To monitor application performance
Answer: B) To validate individual code components
Explanation: Unit tests ensure that small units of code function correctly.
16. What is a recommended approach to handle rollbacks in GKE deployments?
A) Delete the cluster and recreate it
B) Use Deployment rollback features and maintain version history
C) Manually edit pod definitions to previous versions
D) Use Cloud Functions to monitor logs
Answer: B) Use Deployment rollback features and maintain version history
Explanation: Kubernetes Deployments support rollbacks to previous versions for quick recovery.
17. Which of the following is a core responsibility of a Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer in Google Cloud?
A) Designing mobile apps
B) Developing backend business logic
C) Managing CI/CD pipelines and monitoring production workloads
D) Designing hardware for cloud data centers
Answer: C) Managing CI/CD pipelines and monitoring production workloads
Explanation: The role focuses on operations, deployment automation, monitoring, and reliability.
18. When setting up Cloud Monitoring dashboards, what is a best practice?
A) Only include metrics from development environments
B) Customize dashboards for different teams with relevant metrics
C) Use default dashboards only
D) Avoid visualizing error rates
Answer: B) Customize dashboards for different teams with relevant metrics
Explanation: Tailored dashboards help different teams focus on their specific operational needs.
19. Which Google Cloud service allows you to schedule batch jobs and recurring tasks?
A) Cloud Run
B) Cloud Scheduler
C) Cloud Functions
D) Cloud Pub/Sub
Answer: B) Cloud Scheduler
Explanation: Cloud Scheduler enables cron-like scheduling of jobs and HTTP requests.
20. What is the purpose of Chaos Engineering in the context of DevOps?
A) To intentionally introduce faults to improve system resilience
B) To slow down the deployment pipeline
C) To automate code formatting
D) To reduce cloud costs
Answer: A) To intentionally introduce faults to improve system resilience
Explanation: Chaos Engineering tests how systems behave under failure conditions to improve reliability.
21. How does Cloud Monitoring collect metrics from Google Kubernetes Engine?
A) Via direct API calls only
B) Through the Stackdriver Kubernetes Monitoring agent
C) It does not support GKE
D) Via Cloud Functions
Answer: B) Through the Stackdriver Kubernetes Monitoring agent
Explanation: The monitoring agent runs on GKE nodes to collect system and application metrics.
22. In the context of Google Cloud DevOps, what is “toil”?
A) The manual, repetitive operational work that can be automated
B) The deployment process
C) A type of security breach
D) A type of database
Answer: A) The manual, repetitive operational work that can be automated
Explanation: Toil is non-value-added manual work that should be minimized through automation.
23. What is the benefit of using Cloud Run over traditional Compute Engine VMs?
A) Requires manual scaling
B) Runs stateless containers with automatic scaling and no infrastructure management
C) Only supports Node.js applications
D) Does not support HTTPS
Answer: B) Runs stateless containers with automatic scaling and no infrastructure management
Explanation: Cloud Run abstracts infrastructure management and scales containers based on demand.
24. Which tool in Google Cloud helps you identify configuration drift in your infrastructure?
A) Cloud Monitoring
B) Cloud Build
C) Config Connector
D) Cloud Asset Inventory
Answer: D) Cloud Asset Inventory
Explanation: Cloud Asset Inventory tracks resource metadata and configuration changes to help detect drift.
25. You need to limit access to a GKE cluster to only specific IP addresses. What is the best approach?
A) Use Network Policies and authorized networks on the cluster
B) Deploy firewall rules inside pods
C) Use Cloud Functions
D) Disable all network access
Answer: A) Use Network Policies and authorized networks on the cluster
Explanation: Network Policies restrict traffic at the pod level; authorized networks restrict API access.
26. What does the “Error Budget” represent in SRE?
A) The cost allocated for errors in the budget
B) The allowed threshold of unreliability without violating the SLO
C) The number of errors logged in a day
D) The budget for cloud resources
Answer: B) The allowed threshold of unreliability without violating the SLO
Explanation: Error Budget quantifies the acceptable level of failure or downtime.
27. Which Google Cloud service enables event-driven, serverless compute in response to HTTP requests or cloud events?
A) Cloud Run
B) Cloud Functions
C) App Engine
D) Cloud Storage
Answer: B) Cloud Functions
Explanation: Cloud Functions are lightweight, single-purpose functions triggered by events or HTTP.
28. What is a key feature of blue-green deployments?
A) It deploys only to a single environment at a time
B) It maintains two separate production environments to reduce downtime during deployments
C) It requires manual switching of DNS records each time
D) It is not supported in Kubernetes
Answer: B) It maintains two separate production environments to reduce downtime during deployments
Explanation: Blue-green keeps two identical environments so traffic can switch with minimal downtime.
29. When troubleshooting a service slowdown, which Google Cloud tool helps you analyze request traces across services?
A) Cloud Logging
B) Cloud Trace
C) Cloud Build
D) Cloud Scheduler
Answer: B) Cloud Trace
Explanation: Cloud Trace provides detailed latency data across distributed systems.
30. How can you automate rollback in your CI/CD pipeline if a deployment fails?
A) Use manual intervention only
B) Implement health checks and automated rollback scripts triggered by failed deployments
C) Ignore failed deployments and continue
D) Restart the entire cloud project
Answer: B) Implement health checks and automated rollback scripts triggered by failed deployments
Explanation: Automating rollbacks reduces downtime by reverting to a stable version on failure detection.
31. Which of the following best describes the purpose of Cloud Build’s build steps?
A) Each step represents a separate VM in Compute Engine.
B) Steps run sequentially in isolated containers during the build process.
C) Steps are executed in parallel to speed up the build process.
D) Steps store the final build artifacts.
Answer: B) Steps run sequentially in isolated containers during the build process.
Explanation: Cloud Build executes each build step in its own container, running them sequentially to ensure modular and isolated tasks.
32. What is the primary benefit of using Istio service mesh on GKE?
A) Automatically scales pods horizontally.
B) Adds traffic management, security, and observability features without modifying application code.
C) Converts containerized applications to serverless apps.
D) Manages billing and cost reporting for Kubernetes clusters.
Answer: B) Adds traffic management, security, and observability features without modifying application code.
Explanation: Istio provides load balancing, traffic routing, policy enforcement, and telemetry as a transparent layer for microservices.
33. How does Cloud Monitoring integrate with Kubernetes clusters?
A) Using the Stackdriver Kubernetes Monitoring agent installed on nodes.
B) By directly querying Kubernetes API server.
C) Through Cloud Functions triggered on pod lifecycle events.
D) It doesn’t support Kubernetes monitoring.
Answer: A) Using the Stackdriver Kubernetes Monitoring agent installed on nodes.
Explanation: The monitoring agent collects metrics and logs from Kubernetes nodes and pods and exports them to Cloud Monitoring.
34. When deploying a multi-region application on Google Cloud, what technique can improve latency and availability?
A) Use a single Compute Engine instance.
B) Deploy identical services in multiple regions with global load balancing.
C) Deploy only in the US region.
D) Use a static IP address for all regions.
Answer: B) Deploy identical services in multiple regions with global load balancing.
Explanation: Multi-region deployment with global load balancing ensures low latency and fault tolerance.
35. Which IAM role should you assign to a service account that needs to deploy applications on GKE?
A) Storage Object Viewer
B) Kubernetes Engine Developer
C) Compute Network Admin
D) Cloud SQL Admin
Answer: B) Kubernetes Engine Developer
Explanation: This role allows the service account to create and update GKE resources.
36. Which is the best practice for secrets management in GCP DevOps workflows?
A) Hard-code secrets in environment variables.
B) Store secrets in Cloud Storage buckets.
C) Use Secret Manager to securely store and manage access to secrets.
D) Encrypt secrets manually and store in source code repository.
Answer: C) Use Secret Manager to securely store and manage access to secrets.
Explanation: Secret Manager provides secure storage and access controls for sensitive information.
37. What is the recommended way to handle stateful workloads in Kubernetes on Google Cloud?
A) Use ephemeral containers only.
B) Use Persistent Volumes backed by Google Persistent Disks.
C) Store data on pod local storage.
D) Use Cloud Functions.
Answer: B) Use Persistent Volumes backed by Google Persistent Disks.
Explanation: Persistent Volumes provide durable storage independent of pod lifecycle.
38. How can you automate the rollback of a failed Cloud Build deployment?
A) Configure a build trigger that rolls back on failure using Cloud Build APIs.
B) Manually revert to the last commit.
C) Cloud Build does not support rollback automation.
D) Use App Engine for rollback.
Answer: A) Configure a build trigger that rolls back on failure using Cloud Build APIs.
Explanation: You can integrate automated rollback steps within Cloud Build pipelines using scripts and triggers.
39. What GCP feature helps you analyze logs and create alerts based on log content?
A) Cloud Storage
B) Cloud Logging with Log-based Metrics
C) Cloud Build
D) Cloud Spanner
Answer: B) Cloud Logging with Log-based Metrics
Explanation: Log-based metrics let you generate metrics from logs that can trigger alerts.
40. What does “shift-left” testing mean in DevOps?
A) Testing is done only after deployment.
B) Testing earlier in the software development lifecycle to catch defects sooner.
C) Ignoring testing during development.
D) Deploying directly to production without testing.
Answer: B) Testing earlier in the software development lifecycle to catch defects sooner.
Explanation: Shift-left means integrating testing earlier, reducing defects and speeding delivery.
41. Which is the best way to monitor the health of microservices running on GKE?
A) Rely on pod restart counts only.
B) Implement health checks (readiness and liveness probes) and use Cloud Monitoring dashboards.
C) Disable monitoring to improve performance.
D) Only monitor Compute Engine VM health.
Answer: B) Implement health checks (readiness and liveness probes) and use Cloud Monitoring dashboards.
Explanation: Health probes help Kubernetes manage pod lifecycle; Cloud Monitoring visualizes health.
42. How does Cloud Trace improve debugging?
A) By generating alerts based on log patterns.
B) By visualizing latency and performance issues in distributed systems.
C) By scaling up resources automatically.
D) By encrypting sensitive data.
Answer: B) By visualizing latency and performance issues in distributed systems.
Explanation: Cloud Trace collects timing data of requests to identify bottlenecks.
43. What is the role of Cloud Tasks in a DevOps environment?
A) To schedule batch jobs on Compute Engine.
B) To manage asynchronous execution of distributed workloads.
C) To store configuration files.
D) To build Docker images.
Answer: B) To manage asynchronous execution of distributed workloads.
Explanation: Cloud Tasks queues and dispatches asynchronous work reliably.
44. Which GCP service helps implement role-based access control (RBAC) for Kubernetes clusters?
A) Cloud IAM integrated with Kubernetes RBAC.
B) Cloud DNS.
C) Cloud Storage.
D) Cloud Scheduler.
Answer: A) Cloud IAM integrated with Kubernetes RBAC.
Explanation: IAM identities can be mapped to Kubernetes RBAC roles for fine-grained access control.
45. What is a primary benefit of using Google Cloud’s Operations Suite (formerly Stackdriver) for DevOps?
A) It replaces all coding work.
B) It provides integrated logging, monitoring, tracing, and debugging.
C) It manages cloud billing only.
D) It creates VM instances automatically.
Answer: B) It provides integrated logging, monitoring, tracing, and debugging.
Explanation: Operations Suite offers end-to-end visibility for cloud applications.
46. How does canary deployment help reduce deployment risk?
A) It deploys new code to all users at once.
B) It deploys to a small subset of users first, monitors impact, then rolls out more broadly.
C) It disables monitoring during rollout.
D) It avoids using version control.
Answer: B) It deploys to a small subset of users first, monitors impact, then rolls out more broadly.
Explanation: This approach allows catching issues early before full deployment.
47. What is the function of a liveness probe in Kubernetes?
A) To restart pods that are running but not healthy.
B) To scale pods automatically.
C) To route network traffic.
D) To secure pods from unauthorized access.
Answer: A) To restart pods that are running but not healthy.
Explanation: Liveness probes detect unhealthy containers and restart them automatically.
48. Which Google Cloud service supports building and managing container images securely?
A) Container Registry (Artifact Registry)
B) Cloud SQL
C) Cloud Functions
D) Cloud Pub/Sub
Answer: A) Container Registry (Artifact Registry)
Explanation: Artifact Registry stores container images securely and integrates with Cloud Build.
49. What is an advantage of using Cloud Spanner in a DevOps environment?
A) It is a serverless compute platform.
B) It offers global, strongly consistent relational database capabilities with high availability.
C) It is a logging service.
D) It replaces Kubernetes clusters.
Answer: B) It offers global, strongly consistent relational database capabilities with high availability.
Explanation: Cloud Spanner is a fully managed, scalable, globally distributed database.
50. How can you enforce policy compliance for GCP resources in a DevOps pipeline?
A) Use manual checks only.
B) Implement Policy Controller (Gatekeeper) with Config Sync.
C) Use Cloud Functions exclusively.
D) Disable resource creation permissions.
Answer: B) Implement Policy Controller (Gatekeeper) with Config Sync.
Explanation: Policy Controller enforces constraints and governance policies on resources.
51. What’s the main advantage of using Cloud Build for continuous integration?
A) It requires managing your own build infrastructure.
B) It provides fully managed, serverless build pipelines that integrate with various source repositories.
C) It only supports Python projects.
D) It doesn’t support containerized builds.
Answer: B) It provides fully managed, serverless build pipelines that integrate with various source repositories.
Explanation: Cloud Build is flexible, scalable, and integrates with GitHub, Bitbucket, Cloud Source Repositories.
52. Which of the following can be used to automate compliance auditing of GCP resources?
A) Cloud Build
B) Forseti Security or Security Command Center
C) Cloud Run
D) Cloud Functions
Answer: B) Forseti Security or Security Command Center
Explanation: These tools audit and report security and compliance issues in GCP environments.
53. In the context of DevOps, what is “toil”?
A) Productive and value-added work.
B) Repetitive, manual operational work that can be automated.
C) The act of coding new features.
D) A type of cloud storage.
Answer: B) Repetitive, manual operational work that can be automated.
Explanation: Minimizing toil increases efficiency and reliability.
54. Which tool can you use to perform blue-green deployments on GKE?
A) kubectl rolling-update command
B) Using two deployments and switching traffic via a service selector or ingress rules
C) Cloud Storage bucket versioning
D) Cloud Functions trigger
Answer: B) Using two deployments and switching traffic via a service selector or ingress rules
Explanation: Blue-green involves maintaining two environments and switching traffic atomically.
55. How can you ensure zero downtime during deployments in Kubernetes?
A) Delete all pods at once during deployment.
B) Use rolling updates with readiness probes to control pod availability.
C) Disable health checks during deployments.
D) Restart the cluster.
Answer: B) Use rolling updates with readiness probes to control pod availability.
Explanation: Rolling updates replace pods gradually, ensuring availability.
56. What Google Cloud service allows you to centrally manage configuration for Kubernetes clusters?
A) Cloud Run
B) Config Sync (part of Anthos Config Management)
C) Cloud Build
D) Cloud Scheduler
Answer: B) Config Sync (part of Anthos Config Management)
Explanation: Config Sync automates config and policy enforcement across clusters.
57. What does the term “immutable infrastructure” mean?
A) Infrastructure that can be changed anytime manually.
B) Infrastructure components are replaced rather than modified to ensure consistency.
C) Infrastructure managed only by humans.
D) Infrastructure that never needs updates.
Answer: B) Infrastructure components are replaced rather than modified to ensure consistency.
Explanation: Immutable infrastructure improves reliability and simplifies rollbacks.
58. What’s the primary benefit of using Cloud Pub/Sub in a microservices architecture?
A) It stores large files.
B) It provides asynchronous messaging between independent services.
C) It acts as a database.
D) It runs containers.
Answer: B) It provides asynchronous messaging between independent services.
Explanation: Pub/Sub decouples services via event-driven communication.
59. How do you implement continuous deployment with minimal human intervention in GCP?
A) Use manual approval steps only.
B) Automate the pipeline with Cloud Build triggers and deploy to environments after passing tests.
C) Disable testing.
D) Use Cloud Storage only.
Answer: B) Automate the pipeline with Cloud Build triggers and deploy to environments after passing tests.
Explanation: CI/CD pipelines automate testing, building, and deployment.
60. What is the benefit of using Google Cloud Operations Suite’s Error Reporting?
A) It automatically scales Compute Engine instances.
B) It aggregates and notifies about application errors in real-time.
C) It manages billing alerts.
D) It performs code linting.
Answer: B) It aggregates and notifies about application errors in real-time.
Explanation: Error Reporting helps detect and prioritize errors quickly.
