Cloud architecture design and best practices tested on the GCP Professional Cloud Architect exam.
45 cards · basic cards · AI-written, checked twice. Edit anything.
- What is the primary purpose of Compute Engine in GCP?
- To provide scalable, managed virtual machines (VMs) that run Linux or Windows workloads.
- When should you use App Engine over Compute Engine?
- When you want fully managed, auto-scaling application hosting without managing VMs or infrastructure.
- What is Cloud Run used for?
- Running stateless container images with automatic scaling, billing per request, and no server management.
- Which GCP service provides managed Kubernetes clusters?
- Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), a fully managed container orchestration service.
- When should you use Cloud Storage instead of Firestore?
- When you need to store large objects like images, videos, or backups, or when you do not need real-time database queries.
- What is the purpose of Cloud Firestore?
- A managed, serverless NoSQL database for real-time data synchronization and mobile/web applications.
- What is Cloud Bigtable used for?
- High-throughput, low-latency NoSQL database for analytics, time-series data, and massive scale workloads.
- When should you use Cloud SQL?
- When you need a fully managed relational database (MySQL, PostgreSQL, SQL Server) with ACID compliance.
- What is the difference between Cloud SQL and Spanner?
- Spanner is globally distributed, strongly consistent, and horizontally scalable; Cloud SQL is zonal with strong consistency.
- What are the storage classes in Cloud Storage?
- Standard, Nearline, Coldline, and Archive, ordered by access frequency and cost.
- How do you reduce egress costs in a multi-region GCP deployment?
- Use Cloud CDN to cache content at edge locations, use Cloud Interconnect for private connectivity, and colocate resources in the same region.
- What is VPC Service Controls used for?
- Enforcing security perimeters around Google Cloud services to prevent data exfiltration and unauthorized access.
- What is Cloud IAM and how does it work?
- GCP identity and access management that uses roles containing predefined permissions, assigned to identities (users, service accounts, groups).
- What are the three types of IAM roles?
- Basic roles (Owner, Editor, Viewer), predefined roles (service-specific), and custom roles (user-defined permissions).
- When should you use a service account?
- When applications or services need to authenticate to GCP APIs and services without user credentials.