Professional Cloud Architect on Google Cloud Platform Exam Practice Test
Prepare to earn your Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect certification with confidence using our expertly crafted Professional Cloud Architect Exam Practice Test. Whether you’re a seasoned cloud engineer or new to Google Cloud Platform (GCP), this comprehensive practice exam is designed to help you master key concepts, validate your readiness, and boost your chances of success on the official exam.
Why Choose This Practice Test?
This practice test is built to closely mirror the real exam experience. With real-world scenario-based multiple-choice questions, detailed answer explanations, and up-to-date content aligned with the latest GCP services, you’ll gain the knowledge and confidence needed to excel.
Our test covers all critical domains assessed on the exam:
Designing and planning a cloud solution architecture
Managing and provisioning GCP infrastructure
Designing for security and compliance
Analyzing and optimizing technical and business processes
Managing implementation and ensuring reliability
Each question is designed to reinforce both theoretical understanding and practical application, giving you a deeper grasp of the GCP ecosystem.
Key Features:
✔️ 230+ high-quality, up-to-date multiple-choice questions
✔️ In-depth explanations for every answer
✔️ Covers all topics tested in the latest exam version
✔️ Instant download – study at your own pace
✔️ Great for last-minute review or structured exam prep
Whether you’re looking to strengthen your cloud architecture skills, prepare for job interviews, or pass the Professional Cloud Architect exam on your first attempt, this practice test is a valuable tool in your study arsenal.
Who Is This For?
Cloud professionals preparing for Google’s Professional Cloud Architect certification
IT architects and engineers transitioning to GCP
Developers and sysadmins working on cloud-native projects
Anyone pursuing career advancement in cloud computing
Boost Your Certification Success
Becoming a Google Cloud Certified Professional Cloud Architect demonstrates your ability to design, develop, and manage robust cloud solutions on Google Cloud. This practice exam ensures you’re thoroughly prepared to meet those expectations and tackle the exam with confidence.
Sample Questions and Answers
1. Which GCP service allows you to define infrastructure as code for your cloud resources?
A) Cloud Functions
B) Deployment Manager
C) Cloud Run
D) App Engine
Answer: B) Deployment Manager
Explanation: Deployment Manager is GCP’s infrastructure-as-code service that allows you to define and deploy cloud resources using YAML or Python configuration files.
2. You need to design a highly available, multi-region database solution on GCP with automatic failover. Which managed service should you choose?
A) Cloud SQL with read replicas
B) Cloud Spanner
C) Bigtable with regional replication
D) Firestore in Native mode
Answer: B) Cloud Spanner
Explanation: Cloud Spanner provides global, strongly consistent, and highly available database capabilities with automatic multi-region replication and failover.
3. What IAM role should you assign to a user who only needs to deploy applications to App Engine without editing other resources?
A) Editor
B) App Engine Deployer
C) Owner
D) Cloud Run Admin
Answer: B) App Engine Deployer
Explanation: The App Engine Deployer role grants permission to deploy applications to App Engine without granting broader permissions like Editor or Owner.
4. Which GCP service is best suited for processing streaming data with low latency?
A) Dataflow
B) BigQuery
C) Cloud Pub/Sub
D) Cloud Functions
Answer: A) Dataflow
Explanation: Dataflow supports stream and batch data processing with low latency, making it ideal for real-time data pipelines.
5. Your company requires encryption of data at rest by default on GCP. What encryption option does GCP provide?
A) Customer-supplied encryption keys only
B) Google-managed encryption keys only
C) Both Google-managed and customer-managed encryption keys
D) No encryption by default
Answer: C) Both Google-managed and customer-managed encryption keys
Explanation: GCP automatically encrypts data at rest with Google-managed keys but also allows customers to use their own encryption keys via CMEK (Customer-Managed Encryption Keys).
6. What is the maximum size of a single object stored in Google Cloud Storage?
A) 5 TB
B) 10 TB
C) 1 TB
D) 50 TB
Answer: A) 5 TB
Explanation: Google Cloud Storage supports individual objects up to 5 TB in size.
7. Which Google Cloud product should you use to manage API keys and OAuth tokens centrally?
A) Cloud Identity
B) Cloud IAM
C) Apigee API Management
D) Cloud Endpoints
Answer: C) Apigee API Management
Explanation: Apigee is designed for API lifecycle management, including secure management of API keys and OAuth tokens.
8. You want to minimize the cost of a BigQuery job that processes frequently accessed tables with small, incremental updates. Which table type is optimal?
A) External Table
B) Partitioned Table
C) Materialized View
D) Sharded Table
Answer: B) Partitioned Table
Explanation: Partitioned tables reduce query costs by scanning only relevant partitions, optimizing performance for incremental updates.
9. Which storage class is best suited for data accessed less than once a year but must be immediately available?
A) Standard
B) Nearline
C) Coldline
D) Archive
Answer: D) Archive
Explanation: Archive Storage is designed for long-term data retention with infrequent access, offering the lowest cost but immediate availability.
10. You need to create a VPC that spans multiple regions with private connectivity between all resources. What GCP feature supports this?
A) Shared VPC
B) VPC Peering
C) Cloud VPN
D) Cloud Interconnect
Answer: A) Shared VPC
Explanation: Shared VPC allows multiple projects across regions to connect to a centrally managed VPC network, enabling private connectivity.
11. Which GCP service provides serverless container orchestration?
A) App Engine
B) Cloud Run
C) Kubernetes Engine (GKE)
D) Cloud Functions
Answer: B) Cloud Run
Explanation: Cloud Run runs stateless containers in a fully managed, serverless environment, automatically scaling based on demand.
12. What is the default maximum number of nodes per cluster in Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)?
A) 1000
B) 500
C) 100
D) 250
Answer: A) 1000
Explanation: The default maximum number of nodes in a GKE cluster is 1000, although this can be adjusted with specific quotas.
13. Which tool should you use to monitor application-level metrics and logs in GCP?
A) Cloud Trace
B) Cloud Logging
C) Cloud Monitoring
D) Cloud Debugger
Answer: C) Cloud Monitoring
Explanation: Cloud Monitoring collects and analyzes metrics and logs to provide visibility into application and infrastructure health.
14. Your project requires deploying a machine learning model that scales automatically. Which GCP service fits best?
A) AI Platform Prediction
B) Cloud Functions
C) Cloud Run
D) BigQuery ML
Answer: A) AI Platform Prediction
Explanation: AI Platform Prediction provides managed hosting for machine learning models with automatic scaling.
15. How can you secure a GCP resource so that only a specific group of users can access it?
A) Use VPC Service Controls
B) Assign IAM roles to the user group on the resource
C) Use Cloud Armor policies
D) Restrict access via firewall rules
Answer: B) Assign IAM roles to the user group on the resource
Explanation: IAM roles define permissions at resource level, allowing control over which users or groups can access the resource.
16. What is the primary function of Cloud Pub/Sub?
A) Storage of large datasets
B) Messaging middleware for event-driven architectures
C) Managed SQL database service
D) Data visualization and reporting
Answer: B) Messaging middleware for event-driven architectures
Explanation: Cloud Pub/Sub is a fully managed messaging service for sending and receiving event data asynchronously.
17. Which networking feature provides encrypted, private connectivity between on-premises network and GCP?
A) Cloud VPN
B) Cloud Interconnect
C) VPC Peering
D) Cloud NAT
Answer: A) Cloud VPN
Explanation: Cloud VPN establishes encrypted tunnels over the public internet between on-premises and GCP networks.
18. What is the minimum duration for which committed use contracts in GCP are valid?
A) 12 months
B) 1 month
C) 24 months
D) 6 months
Answer: B) 1 month
Explanation: Committed use contracts can be for a minimum of 1 month, with typical options for 1 or 3 years.
19. Which service should you use to analyze logs in near real-time for security insights?
A) Cloud Logging
B) Cloud Security Command Center
C) Cloud Monitoring
D) Cloud Armor
Answer: B) Cloud Security Command Center
Explanation: The Security Command Center provides security and risk insights by analyzing logs and configurations continuously.
20. Your app needs to be deployed globally with low latency and automatic traffic splitting. Which GCP service provides this?
A) Cloud CDN
B) Global HTTP(S) Load Balancer
C) Cloud Functions
D) Cloud VPN
Answer: B) Global HTTP(S) Load Balancer
Explanation: The Global HTTP(S) Load Balancer routes traffic globally with low latency and supports traffic splitting for deployments.
21. What command-line tool is recommended for managing GCP resources?
A) gcloud
B) gsutil
C) kubectl
D) bq
Answer: A) gcloud
Explanation: The gcloud CLI is the primary tool for managing GCP services and resources.
22. Which GCP service is best suited for running containerized batch jobs?
A) Cloud Run
B) Kubernetes Engine (GKE)
C) Cloud Functions
D) Cloud Composer
Answer: B) Kubernetes Engine (GKE)
Explanation: GKE can manage batch jobs via Kubernetes Jobs and CronJobs for containerized workloads.
23. How can you enforce compliance policies across multiple GCP projects?
A) Using VPC Service Controls
B) Applying Organization Policy constraints
C) Using IAM custom roles
D) Configuring Cloud Armor
Answer: B) Applying Organization Policy constraints
Explanation: Organization Policies allow administrators to enforce rules and compliance across an organization’s projects.
24. Which tool helps you inspect, troubleshoot, and debug live production applications in GCP?
A) Cloud Debugger
B) Cloud Profiler
C) Cloud Trace
D) Cloud Logging
Answer: A) Cloud Debugger
Explanation: Cloud Debugger allows developers to inspect the state of applications running in production without stopping or slowing them.
25. You want to automate your GCP resource provisioning and enforce policy as code. Which service fits best?
A) Deployment Manager
B) Cloud Build
C) Terraform on GCP
D) Cloud Composer
Answer: C) Terraform on GCP
Explanation: Terraform is a popular infrastructure-as-code tool that supports GCP and allows policy enforcement through modules.
26. Which GCP service is best for building a data warehouse with fast SQL analytics?
A) BigQuery
B) Cloud SQL
C) Bigtable
D) Firestore
Answer: A) BigQuery
Explanation: BigQuery is a fully managed, serverless data warehouse optimized for fast SQL queries on large datasets.
27. What is the default networking mode for Google Kubernetes Engine clusters?
A) VPC-native (using Alias IPs)
B) Route-based
C) Legacy network
D) NAT Gateway
Answer: A) VPC-native (using Alias IPs)
Explanation: New GKE clusters default to VPC-native mode, leveraging Alias IPs for better IP address management.
28. Which GCP service enables orchestration of workflows involving multiple cloud services?
A) Cloud Composer
B) Cloud Functions
C) Cloud Run
D) Cloud Build
Answer: A) Cloud Composer
Explanation: Cloud Composer is a managed Apache Airflow service used to orchestrate workflows across various cloud services.
29. You need to restrict API access to only certain IP ranges. Which service can enforce this?
A) VPC Service Controls
B) Cloud Armor
C) IAM policies
D) Cloud DNS
Answer: B) Cloud Armor
Explanation: Cloud Armor provides DDoS protection and allows IP-based access control for HTTP(S) load balancers.
30. Which is the most secure way to authenticate applications running on Compute Engine instances to access other GCP services?
A) Use service account keys stored on the instance
B) Use OAuth 2.0 user credentials
C) Use the Compute Engine default service account with proper IAM roles
D) Use basic username and password authentication
Answer: C) Use the Compute Engine default service account with proper IAM roles
Explanation: The best practice is to assign a service account with the least privilege to the instance, avoiding static keys and using IAM roles for access control.
31. You want to implement a multi-region, active-active architecture for your web app on GCP. Which GCP networking component allows you to distribute user traffic globally with automatic failover?
A) Cloud CDN
B) Cloud Load Balancing (Global HTTP(S) Load Balancer)
C) Cloud VPN
D) VPC Peering
Answer: B) Cloud Load Balancing (Global HTTP(S) Load Balancer)
Explanation: The global HTTP(S) Load Balancer enables distribution of traffic across multiple regions and provides automatic failover, making it ideal for multi-region active-active deployments.
32. Which of the following best describes Google Cloud’s Shared VPC?
A) A VPC that is shared with external organizations
B) A VPC network shared across projects within an organization for centralized control
C) A peered VPC between two independent projects
D) A VPN connection between two VPCs
Answer: B) A VPC network shared across projects within an organization for centralized control
Explanation: Shared VPC allows an organization to centrally control a VPC network that is shared across multiple projects, enabling consistent security and network policy enforcement.
33. Your application requires storing sensitive user data. You want to enforce encryption of that data using keys that your organization manages. Which GCP feature should you use?
A) Google-managed encryption keys
B) Customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK)
C) Customer-supplied encryption keys (CSEK)
D) No encryption is required
Answer: B) Customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK)
Explanation: CMEK allows customers to control the encryption keys in Cloud Key Management Service (KMS) that GCP services use to encrypt data at rest.
34. Which Google Cloud service enables you to build an event-driven, serverless architecture that automatically scales with the incoming event load?
A) Cloud Run
B) Cloud Functions
C) App Engine Standard Environment
D) Cloud SQL
Answer: B) Cloud Functions
Explanation: Cloud Functions is a serverless compute service designed for event-driven workloads that automatically scales based on demand.
35. What is the best practice for managing secrets (e.g., API keys, passwords) securely on GCP?
A) Store secrets in environment variables in Compute Engine instances
B) Use Cloud Key Management Service (KMS) for encrypting secrets
C) Store secrets in Cloud Storage buckets with public access
D) Use Secret Manager
Answer: D) Use Secret Manager
Explanation: Secret Manager is a dedicated GCP service designed to securely store, manage, and access secrets with fine-grained IAM control and audit logging.
36. You want to migrate a large dataset from on-premises to GCP without saturating your internet connection. Which option is best?
A) Transfer the data over public internet with gsutil
B) Use Cloud Storage Transfer Service with online transfer
C) Use Transfer Appliance
D) Use BigQuery Data Transfer Service
Answer: C) Use Transfer Appliance
Explanation: Transfer Appliance is a hardware appliance you physically ship to Google for offline transfer of large datasets, avoiding network saturation.
37. Which GCP service offers managed Hadoop and Spark clusters?
A) Cloud Dataflow
B) Cloud Dataproc
C) BigQuery
D) Cloud Composer
Answer: B) Cloud Dataproc
Explanation: Cloud Dataproc is a fully managed Hadoop and Spark service that lets you run big data workloads with low operational overhead.
38. When designing a secure architecture, which GCP feature allows you to restrict access to cloud resources based on IP ranges and identity?
A) IAM policies
B) VPC Service Controls
C) Cloud Armor security policies
D) Cloud Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP)
Answer: D) Cloud Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP)
Explanation: IAP provides access control based on user identity and context, such as IP address, enabling secure access to GCP resources.
39. Your application needs to perform long-running batch processing jobs with containerized workloads. Which GCP service should you use?
A) Cloud Run
B) Cloud Functions
C) Kubernetes Engine (GKE) Jobs
D) App Engine
Answer: C) Kubernetes Engine (GKE) Jobs
Explanation: GKE supports Kubernetes Jobs, which are designed for batch and long-running containerized jobs.
40. What is a key benefit of using BigQuery BI Engine?
A) Fully managed Spark environment
B) Serverless interactive analytics with in-memory acceleration
C) Real-time event processing
D) Managed relational database
Answer: B) Serverless interactive analytics with in-memory acceleration
Explanation: BI Engine is an in-memory analysis service integrated with BigQuery to accelerate dashboard and report queries.
41. Which service provides a fully managed environment for orchestrating Apache Airflow workflows?
A) Cloud Composer
B) Cloud Scheduler
C) Cloud Functions
D) Cloud Run
Answer: A) Cloud Composer
Explanation: Cloud Composer is a managed service that runs Apache Airflow for workflow orchestration.
42. You want to analyze user behavior data in real time to generate dashboards. Which combination of services is most suitable?
A) Cloud SQL and Cloud Storage
B) Cloud Pub/Sub, Dataflow, and BigQuery
C) Bigtable and Cloud Functions
D) Cloud Dataproc and Cloud Storage
Answer: B) Cloud Pub/Sub, Dataflow, and BigQuery
Explanation: Cloud Pub/Sub ingests streaming data, Dataflow processes it in real time, and BigQuery stores and analyzes it for dashboards.
43. Which feature enables resource hierarchy in GCP to organize projects and enforce policies?
A) IAM
B) Organizations, Folders, and Projects
C) VPC Networks
D) Billing Accounts
Answer: B) Organizations, Folders, and Projects
Explanation: The resource hierarchy uses Organizations, Folders, and Projects to organize and manage access control and policies.
44. You want to implement CI/CD pipelines with automated build, test, and deploy on GCP. Which service should you use?
A) Cloud Build
B) Cloud Deployment Manager
C) Cloud Functions
D) Cloud Run
Answer: A) Cloud Build
Explanation: Cloud Build is GCP’s fully managed continuous integration and delivery platform.
45. How can you control costs by limiting VM instance creation within your organization?
A) Use IAM roles to restrict project creation
B) Apply budget alerts and quotas
C) Use Cloud Armor
D) Disable billing account
Answer: B) Apply budget alerts and quotas
Explanation: Budget alerts help monitor costs, while quotas limit the number of resources created.
46. Which of the following services is best suited for storing and querying semi-structured JSON data?
A) Cloud SQL
B) BigQuery
C) Cloud Spanner
D) Cloud Bigtable
Answer: B) BigQuery
Explanation: BigQuery supports nested and repeated fields, making it ideal for semi-structured data like JSON.
47. Your application requires ultra-low latency, globally distributed NoSQL database. Which service is optimal?
A) Cloud SQL
B) Cloud Bigtable
C) Firestore in Datastore mode
D) Firestore in Native mode
Answer: D) Firestore in Native mode
Explanation: Firestore provides a globally distributed NoSQL document database optimized for real-time and low-latency access.
48. Which service provides serverless automated patching and maintenance for VMs?
A) Cloud Functions
B) OS Config Management
C) Cloud Run
D) Cloud Deployment Manager
Answer: B) OS Config Management
Explanation: OS Config Management automates patching and configuration management for VM instances.
49. What is the best approach to architect a fault-tolerant application with minimal downtime on GCP?
A) Deploy in a single zone with auto-healing
B) Deploy in multiple zones with load balancing
C) Use a single VM with Cloud SQL backend
D) Use only App Engine Standard Environment
Answer: B) Deploy in multiple zones with load balancing
Explanation: Multi-zone deployment with load balancing provides fault tolerance and high availability.
50. Which service can you use to protect applications against distributed denial-of-service (DDoS) attacks?
A) Cloud Armor
B) Cloud VPN
C) Cloud CDN
D) Cloud Identity
Answer: A) Cloud Armor
Explanation: Cloud Armor provides DDoS protection and web application firewall capabilities.
51. What is the role of the metadata server in Compute Engine instances?
A) Hosts user data and metadata accessible by the instance
B) Provides network routing
C) Manages storage encryption
D) Monitors VM health
Answer: A) Hosts user data and metadata accessible by the instance
Explanation: The metadata server provides instance-specific data and configurations accessible inside the VM.
52. How does Google Cloud Billing export help in cost management?
A) It disables resource creation beyond budget
B) It sends real-time billing alerts
C) It exports billing data to BigQuery for analysis
D) It automatically scales down resources
Answer: C) It exports billing data to BigQuery for analysis
Explanation: Exporting billing data to BigQuery enables detailed cost analysis and reporting.
53. Which of the following best describes Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) Autopilot mode?
A) User manages all nodes manually
B) Fully managed Kubernetes with Google handling node management
C) Serverless functions management
D) Cloud Run variant
Answer: B) Fully managed Kubernetes with Google handling node management
Explanation: Autopilot mode abstracts node management, letting Google manage infrastructure while users focus on workloads.
54. What is a primary use case of Cloud Run?
A) Long-running database services
B) Stateless HTTP containers with automatic scaling
C) Stateful streaming applications
D) Batch data processing
Answer: B) Stateless HTTP containers with automatic scaling
Explanation: Cloud Run is optimized for stateless containerized applications that scale automatically based on HTTP traffic.
55. What is the best GCP service to analyze logs for identifying performance bottlenecks?
A) Cloud Logging
B) Cloud Trace
C) Cloud Monitoring
D) Cloud Profiler
Answer: B) Cloud Trace
Explanation: Cloud Trace provides distributed tracing for performance analysis across services.
56. You want to enforce multi-factor authentication (MFA) for all GCP users in your organization. Which tool do you configure?
A) IAM roles
B) Cloud Identity or Google Workspace security settings
C) VPC firewall rules
D) Cloud Armor policies
Answer: B) Cloud Identity or Google Workspace security settings
Explanation: MFA is enforced through Cloud Identity or Workspace admin security policies.
57. Which of these GCP services is NOT serverless?
A) Cloud Functions
B) Cloud Run
C) Kubernetes Engine
D) App Engine Standard Environment
Answer: C) Kubernetes Engine
Explanation: GKE requires managing cluster nodes and is not serverless, unlike Cloud Functions, Run, and App Engine Standard.
58. What is the purpose of Cloud NAT in GCP?
A) To provide public IPs to VMs
B) To allow private VMs to access the internet without public IPs
C) To create VPN tunnels
D) To manage DNS records
Answer: B) To allow private VMs to access the internet without public IPs
Explanation: Cloud NAT allows outbound internet access for private instances without exposing them publicly.
59. Which tool should you use to automatically scan container images for vulnerabilities before deployment?
A) Container Analysis
B) Cloud Security Command Center
C) Cloud Armor
D) Binary Authorization
Answer: A) Container Analysis
Explanation: Container Analysis scans container images for security vulnerabilities.
60. You want to enforce policy compliance on container images before deployment. Which GCP service helps?
A) Binary Authorization
B) Container Registry
C) Cloud Build
D) Cloud Functions
Answer: A) Binary Authorization
Explanation: Binary Authorization enforces signature verification and policy checks on container images before allowing deployment.
