Associate Cloud Engineer
Free Google Cloud Certified - Associate Cloud Engineer Practice Test
12 exam-style questions with full explanations — no sign-up. Score yourself, then close your gaps with the full course.
Exam fee ~$1255 exam domainsLevel Intermediate2 timed practice tests in the course
✅ Free practice — no sign-up📝 Real exam-style questions💡 Detailed explanations💸 30-day money-back via Udemy
A company's resource hierarchy has an Organization node containing several department folders. The Finance folder contains 10 projects. The security team wants to grant an external auditor the Viewer role across all 10 Finance projects, without granting any access to other departments' resources. What is the BEST way to accomplish this?
IAM policies bound at the folder level are inherited by all projects within that folder, so granting Viewer at the Finance folder gives the auditor visibility into all 10 Finance projects without touching other departments.
A team has containerized a stateless HTTP microservice. They want it to scale automatically from zero to handle bursty traffic, require no cluster or node management, and only pay when requests are being processed. Which deployment option BEST meets these requirements?
Cloud Run runs arbitrary containers, scales automatically to zero when idle, and charges only for actual request processing time with no infrastructure or cluster management required.
A company needs to deploy a fleet of web server VMs that automatically scale out during traffic spikes and scale in during quiet periods. All VMs must use an identical boot disk image and run the same startup script. Which deployment approach BEST meets these requirements?
Instance templates define a reusable VM configuration (image, machine type, startup script), and managed instance groups (MIGs) built from that template support autoscaling policies based on CPU, load balancing capacity, or custom metrics — exactly matching the scale-out/scale-in requirement.
A production VM's persistent disk is running low on space. The team needs to increase the disk size without any downtime to the running application. What should they do?
Persistent disks can be resized live with 'gcloud compute disks resize DISK_NAME --size=NEW_SIZE' without stopping the VM, and the guest OS file system can then be grown online (e.g., using resize2fs on Linux) with zero downtime.
A company runs a Compute Engine VM that only needs to write new objects to a specific Cloud Storage bucket. It never needs to read, list, or delete existing objects. Which IAM role should be granted to the VM's service account to follow the principle of least privilege?
roles/storage.objectCreator grants only storage.objects.create, which is exactly the write-only permission the VM needs and nothing more.
An organization runs 20 separate GCP projects across different teams. The finance team wants one consolidated itemized invoice covering all projects' costs, with the ability to link or unlink projects from billing centrally. Which setup should they use?
A single Cloud Billing account can be linked to multiple projects, producing one consolidated itemized invoice while allowing admins to link or unlink individual projects as needed.
A company ingests millions of time-series sensor readings per second from IoT devices. They need a NoSQL database that provides very high write throughput, low-latency reads at massive scale (multiple terabytes), and can scale horizontally by adding nodes. Which database should they choose?
Cloud Bigtable is a wide-column NoSQL database purpose-built for high-throughput, low-latency workloads at petabyte scale, such as time-series and IoT sensor data, and scales horizontally by adding nodes.
A development team needs to deploy a stateless HTTP container image that scales down to zero instances when idle, without managing any Kubernetes nodes or cluster infrastructure. Which service should they use?
Cloud Run is a fully managed serverless platform for stateless containers that automatically scales to zero when there is no traffic and requires no cluster or node management.
A company wants all Cloud Logging entries with severity ERROR or higher from their production project to be retained for 5 years for compliance, stored cost-effectively, and queryable with SQL. Which export destination should they configure as a log sink?
BigQuery is the correct sink target when logs need to be queried with SQL for analysis and compliance reporting, while also supporting long-term partitioned storage.
An external auditor needs read-only access to a Cloud SQL instance for exactly one week, after which access must expire automatically without any manual intervention. What should you configure?
IAM Conditions support time-based expressions (e.g., request.time < timestamp('2026-XX-XX')), allowing the binding to expire automatically at a defined date without manual cleanup.
You frequently switch between three different GCP projects from your local workstation using the gcloud CLI, and each project requires a different default account, region, and zone. What is the MOST efficient way to manage these settings with gcloud?
Named gcloud configurations store a full set of properties (project, account, region, zone) per profile, letting you switch instantly between complete environments with a single activate command — this is the CLI feature designed exactly for this use case.
You create a VPC subnet with the CIDR range 10.0.0.0/24. How many usable IP addresses are available for resources (VM instances) in this subnet in Google Cloud?
A /24 range has 256 total addresses. Google Cloud reserves 4 addresses per subnet (the network address, the default gateway, the second-to-last address, and the broadcast address), leaving 252 usable addresses.
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Get my $34.99 deal →Associate Cloud Engineer exam — quick answers
How much does the Associate Cloud Engineer exam cost?
The exam fee is approximately $125 and varies by region — confirm current pricing with the certification vendor before you book.
What topics are on the exam?
It covers 5 domains: Setting Up a Cloud Solution Environment (~18%), Planning and Configuring a Cloud Solution (~20%), Deploying and Implementing a Cloud Solution (~24%), Ensuring Successful Operation of a Cloud Solution (~22%), Configuring Access and Security (~16%). The full course has a dedicated chapter, lab and practice-test coverage for each.
Is this practice test really free?
Yes — all questions on this page are free with explanations and no sign-up. The paid Udemy course adds two full-length timed exams, video lessons and hands-on labs.
How do I get the discount?
Use code FREETEST33 at checkout for $34.99 (list $99.99) through September 14 — the enroll button applies it automatically.
Will this prepare me for the real exam?
The questions mirror the real exam's style and are mapped to the official domains. This is exam-focused preparation — combine the free test with the full course's timed simulations to gauge your readiness.