Google Professional-Cloud-Network-Engineer Exam Topics

1.1 Designing the overall network architecture. Considerations include:

• Failover and disaster recovery strategy
• Options for high availability
• DNS strategy (e.g., on-premises, Cloud DNS, GSLB)
• Meeting business requirements
• Choosing the appropriate load balancing options
• Optimizing for latency (e.g., MTU size, caches, CDN)
• Understanding how quotas are applied per project and per VPC
• Hybrid connectivity (e.g., Google private access for hybrid connectivity)
• Container networking
• IAM and security
• SaaS, PaaS, and IaaS services
• Microsegmentation for security purposes (e.g., using metadata, tags)

1.2 Designing a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC). Considerations include:

• CIDR range for subnets
• IP addressing (e.g., static, ephemeral, private)
• Standalone or shared
• Multiple vs. single
• Multi-zone and multi-region
• Peering
• Firewall (e.g., service account–based, tag-based)
• Routes
• Differences between Google Cloud Networking and other cloud platforms

1.3 Designing a hybrid network. Considerations include:

• Using interconnect (e.g., dedicated vs. partner)
• Peering options (e.g., direct vs. carrier)
• IPsec VPN
• Cloud Router
• Failover and disaster recovery strategy (e.g., building high availability with BGP using cloud router)
• Shared vs. standalone VPC interconnect access
• Cross-organizational access
• Bandwidth

1.4 Designing a container IP addressing plan for Google Kubernetes Engine

2.1 Configuring VPCs. Considerations include:

• Configuring GCP VPC resources (CIDR range, subnets, firewall rules, etc.)
• Configuring VPC peering
• Creating a shared VPC and explaining how to share subnets with other projects
• Configuring API access (private, public, NAT GW, proxy)
• Configuring VPC flow logs

2.2 Configuring routing. Tasks include:

• Configuring internal static/dynamic routing
• Configuring routing policies using tags and priority
• Configuring NAT (e.g., Cloud NAT, instance-based NAT)

2.3 Configuring and maintaining Google Kubernetes Engine clusters. Considerations include:

• VPC-native clusters using alias IPs
• Clusters with shared VPC
• Private clusters
• Cluster network policy
• Adding authorized networks for cluster master access

2.4 Configuring and managing firewall rules. Considerations include:

• Target network tags and service accounts
• Priority
• Network protocols
• Ingress and egress rules
• Firewall logs

3.1 Configuring load balancing. Considerations include:

• Creating backend services
• Firewall and security rules
• HTTP(S) load balancer: including changing URL maps, backend groups, health checks, CDN, and SSL certs
• TCP and SSL proxy load balancers
• Network load balancer
• Internal load balancer
• Session affinity
• Capacity scaling

3.2 Configuring Cloud CDN. Considerations include:

• Enabling and disabling Cloud CDN
• Using cache keys
• Cache invalidation
• Signed URLs

3.3 Configuring and maintaining Cloud DNS. Considerations include:

• Managing zones and records
• Migrating to Cloud DNS
• DNS Security (DNSSEC)
• Global serving with Anycast
• Cloud DNS
• Internal DNS
• Integrating on-premises DNS with GCP

3.4 Enabling other network services. Considerations include:

• Health checks for your instance groups
• Canary (A/B) releases
• Distributing backend instances using regional managed instance groups
• Enabling private API access

4.1 Configuring interconnect. Considerations include:

• Partner (e.g., layer 2 vs. layer 3 connectivity)
• Virtualizing using VLAN attachments
• Bulk storage uploads

4.2 Configuring a site-to-site IPsec VPN (e.g., route-based, policy-based, dynamic or static routing).

4.3 Configuring Cloud Router for reliability.

5.1 Configuring identity and access management (IAM). Tasks include:

• Viewing account IAM assignments
• Assigning IAM roles to accounts or Google Groups
• Defining custom IAM roles
• Using pre-defined IAM roles (e.g., network admin, network viewer, network user)

5.2 Configuring Cloud Armor policies. Considerations include:

• IP-based access control

5.3 Configuring third-party device insertion into VPC using multi-nic (NGFW)

5.4 Managing keys for SSH access

6.1 Logging and monitoring with Stackdriver or GCP Console

6.2 Managing and maintaining security. Considerations include:

• Firewalls (e.g., cloud-based, private)
• Diagnosing and resolving IAM issues (shared VPC, security/network admin)

6.3 Maintaining and troubleshooting connectivity issues. Considerations include:

• Identifying traffic flow topology (e.g., load balancers, SSL offload, network endpoint groups)
• Draining and redirecting traffic flows
• Cross-connect handoff for interconnect
• Monitoring ingress and egress traffic using flow logs
• Monitoring firewall logs
• Managing and troubleshooting VPNs
• Troubleshooting Cloud Router BGP peering issues

6.4 Monitoring, maintaining, and troubleshooting latency and traffic flow. Considerations include:

• Network throughput and latency testing
• Routing issues
• Tracing traffic flow

7.1 Optimizing traffic flow. Considerations include:

• Load balancer and CDN location
• Global vs. regional dynamic routing
• Expanding subnet CIDR ranges in service
• Accommodating workload increases (e.g., autoscaling vs. manual scaling)

7.2 Optimizing for cost and efficiency. Considerations include:

• Cost optimization (Network Service Tiers, Cloud CDN, autoscaler [max instances])
• Automation
• VPN vs. interconnect
• Bandwidth utilization (e.g., kernel sys tuning parameters)