Practice Exam: Professional Cloud Architect

Question bank: 100 · timed mock exam: 120 min

Official exam page on the vendor's site (opens in a new tab) Official exam guide (opens in a new tab) Official prep course (opens in a new tab)

Compare: Google Associate Cloud Engineer vs Google Professional Cloud Architect

  • Designing and planning a cloud solution architecture 26 questions
  • Managing and provisioning a cloud solution infrastructure 18 questions
  • Designing for security and compliance 18 questions
  • Analyzing and optimizing technical and business processes 14 questions
  • Managing implementation 12 questions
  • Ensuring solution and operations excellence 12 questions
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How to prepare for Professional Cloud Architect with InfraPrep

The 100 questions cover 6 domains: Designing and planning a cloud solution architecture, Managing and provisioning a cloud solution infrastructure, Designing for security and compliance, Analyzing and optimizing technical and business processes, Managing implementation, Ensuring solution and operations excellence. 25 of them are free, without an account.

Study mode

Answer at your pace: each answer is corrected straight away, with an explanation and the link to the documentation it relies on.

Exam mode

A timed exam of 120 minutes, with a question map to flag and come back to questions before you submit.

Results by domain

Your score is broken down by domain, so you know what to review first.

Original questions

Every question is written from the public documentation, never copied from the exam. You can contest an answer from study mode.

10 free sample questions

Question 1 Designing and planning a cloud solution architecture

A finance team compares its current on-premises data center spending, where hardware and software were bought upfront and depreciated over years, with a planned move to Google Cloud. According to Google Cloud's cost optimization guidance, how does the cost model change for most cloud resources?

  1. Most cloud resource costs become an operating expense, paid as they are consumed
  2. Google Cloud removes the need to track operating expenses entirely
  3. Cloud costs remain a capital expense, depreciated over the hardware's operating life
  4. Cloud spending must be paid upfront in full before any resource is provisioned
Show the answer and the explanation

Correct answer: A

In the cloud, the costs for most cloud resources are treated as OpEx, incurred as the resources are consumed, unlike the CapEx model of purchasing and depreciating on-premises assets.

Source: official documentation

Question 2 Managing and provisioning a cloud solution infrastructure

A platform team centralizes networking by creating one project that owns the VPC networks and subnets, then attaches several application teams' projects to it so those teams can use the shared subnets without owning network resources themselves. What is this centralizing project called?

  1. A service project
  2. A Shared VPC admin project
  3. A host project
  4. A standalone network project
Show the answer and the explanation

Correct answer: C

When you use Shared VPC, you designate a project as a host project and attach one or more other service projects to it.

Source: official documentation

Question 3 Designing for security and compliance

A holding company already has a Cloud Identity account tied to one Google Cloud organization resource. Leadership asks whether a second, fully independent organization resource can be created under the same Cloud Identity account for a new subsidiary. What does Resource Manager documentation say?

  1. A second organization resource is created automatically for each new subsidiary
  2. A Google Workspace or Cloud Identity account can be associated with exactly one organization resource
  3. Organization resources are created per billing account, not per Cloud Identity account
  4. Any number of organization resources can be created under one Cloud Identity account
Show the answer and the explanation

Correct answer: B

A Google Workspace or Cloud Identity account can be associated with exactly one organization resource.

Source: official documentation

Question 4 Analyzing and optimizing technical and business processes

A disaster recovery plan uses asynchronous replication to a secondary region. Leadership asks what risk this introduces if the primary region fails right before a replication cycle completes. Which concept describes that risk window?

  1. Mean Time To Repair (MTTR), a support metric unrelated to replication
  2. Recovery Time Objective (RTO), which measures how long the application stays down
  3. Recovery Point Objective (RPO): a time window during which data is not yet replicated
  4. Service Level Objective (SLO), an error-budget metric for latency
Show the answer and the explanation

Correct answer: C

When data is replicated asynchronously, there is a time window, called a recovery point objective (RPO), during which the data isn't yet replicated across several locations.

Source: official documentation

Question 5 Managing implementation

A platform team wants backend services to remain unchanged while adding security, traffic management, and data mediation policies in front of them for external API consumers. Which architecture does Apigee provide for this?

  1. A requirement to rewrite each backend service in a language Apigee supports
  2. A client-side SDK that must be installed on every consumer's device
  3. An API proxy layer between backends and clients, so backends stay unchanged
  4. A direct database connection that bypasses all backend services
Show the answer and the explanation

Correct answer: C

Apigee provides an API proxy layer between backend services and clients, and because policies and actions are implemented in that proxy layer, the underlying backend services can remain unchanged.

Source: official documentation

Question 6 Ensuring solution and operations excellence

An SRE team spends significant time on repetitive manual operational tasks and wants Well-Architected Framework guidance on reducing this burden while improving reliability. What does the operational excellence pillar recommend?

  1. Hiring more staff to perform the same manual steps in parallel
  2. Reducing monitoring coverage so fewer incidents are reported
  3. Freezing all changes to production to avoid the need for automation
  4. Embrace automation and orchestration to eliminate toil
Show the answer and the explanation

Correct answer: D

To achieve operational excellence, the framework recommends embracing automation, orchestration, and data-driven insights, because automation helps eliminate toil.

Source: official documentation

Question 7 Designing and planning a cloud solution architecture

An architect is asked to define who should be involved in decisions that affect cost throughout a Google Cloud migration, not only at initial budget sign-off. According to the Well-Architected Framework's cost optimization pillar, which group does this responsibility extend to?

  1. Only the procurement team that negotiates the enterprise discount agreement
  2. Only the CFO and other finance executives who approve the annual budget
  3. Architects, developers, administrators, and operators, throughout the cloud journey
  4. Only site reliability engineers who monitor production incidents
Show the answer and the explanation

Correct answer: C

Cost-affecting decisions are made by architects, developers, administrators, and operators at all stages of an organization's cloud journey, not only by finance leadership.

Source: official documentation

Question 8 Managing and provisioning a cloud solution infrastructure

A team wants objects in a Cloud Storage bucket to automatically move to a cheaper storage class after they reach a certain age, without being deleted. Which lifecycle action should the rule specify?

  1. Delete
  2. A lifecycle rule cannot change storage class; only a manual gsutil command can
  3. AbortIncompleteMultipartUpload
  4. SetStorageClass
Show the answer and the explanation

Correct answer: D

The SetStorageClass action changes the storage class of an object and updates its modification time when the object meets the conditions specified in the lifecycle rule.

Source: official documentation

Question 9 Designing for security and compliance

A security engineer wants to grant a developer temporary elevated access to test whether a specific permission set is sufficient, without editing any IAM policy or issuing new long-lived keys. Which IAM feature fits this need?

  1. Disabling IAM entirely for the duration of the test
  2. Editing the organization policy to grant broader default permissions
  3. Creating a new service account key for every test
  4. Service account impersonation
Show the answer and the explanation

Correct answer: D

Impersonation lets an authenticated principal temporarily gain a service account's permissions, which is useful to temporarily grant elevated access or test whether a set of permissions is sufficient, without changing IAM policies.

Source: official documentation

Question 10 Analyzing and optimizing technical and business processes

A team needs near-zero data loss for a critical database and is evaluating synchronous versus asynchronous replication across regions. According to Google Cloud's disaster recovery guidance, what trade-off should they expect from synchronous replication?

  1. Cost and latency trade-offs, with regional support limited to only a few products
  2. It is free and available across regions for every Google Cloud product
  3. It eliminates all latency impact regardless of the distance between regions
  4. It is only relevant to RTO planning, never to RPO planning
Show the answer and the explanation

Correct answer: A

Synchronous replication has cost and latency trade-offs, and while many Google Cloud products provide it across zones, only a few provide it across regions.

Source: official documentation

Frequently asked questions

Are there free questions, and do I need an account?

Yes. 25 questions of this certification are free in study mode, across all its domains, without a subscription and without registration. The account is created when you subscribe, at checkout.

How does the subscription work, and can I cancel?

One monthly subscription covers all certifications and the timed practice exams. There is no minimum period. You cancel online, at any time, with the "Cancel your contract" function in My account; cancellation takes effect at the end of the month already paid, and no further payment is taken.

Where do the questions come from?

Every question is original, written from the vendor's public documentation. Each answer comes with an explanation and a link to the documentation page it relies on. InfraPrep is not affiliated with the vendors, and certification names belong to their owners.

In which language are the questions?

The questions are written in English, also on the French version of the site.

Is the catalog updated?

Yes, the catalog changes over time: new certifications and new questions are added.