Professional Cloud Network Engineer

Certification exam guide

A Professional Cloud Network Engineer is responsible for the design, implementation, and management of Google Cloud network infrastructure. This includes designing network architectures for high availability, scalability, resiliency, and security. This individual is skilled in configuring and managing Virtual Private Clouds (VPCs), routing, network security services, load balancing, and Cloud DNS. Additionally, they are proficient in setting up hybrid connectivity through Cloud Interconnect and Cloud VPN. Their expertise extends to diagnosing, monitoring, and troubleshooting network operations by using Google Cloud Observability and the Network Intelligence Center.

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Section 1: Designing and planning a Google Cloud network (~26% of the exam)

1.1 Designing an overall network architecture. Considerations include:

● Designing for high availability, failover, disaster recovery, and scale.

● Designing the DNS topology (e.g., on-premises, Cloud DNS).

● Designing for security and data exfiltration prevention requirements.

● Choosing a load balancer for an application.

● Designing for hybrid connectivity (e.g., Private Google Access for hybrid connectivity).

● Planning for Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) networking (e.g., secondary ranges, scale potential based on IP address space, access to GKE control plane).

● Planning Identity and Access Management (IAM) roles including managing IAM roles in a Shared VPC environment.

● Incorporating micro segmentation for security purposes (e.g., using metadata, tags, service accounts, secure tags).

● Planning for connectivity to managed services (e.g., private services access, Private Service Connect, Serverless VPC Access).

● Differentiating between network tiers (e.g., Premium and Standard).

● Designing for VPC Service Controls.

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

● Choosing the VPC type and quantity (e.g., standalone or Shared VPC, number of VPC environments).

● Determining how the networks connect based on requirements (e.g., VPC Network Peering, VPC Network Peering with Network Connectivity Center, Private Service Connect).

● Planning the IP address management strategy (e.g., subnets, IPv6, bring your own IP (public advertised prefix (PAP) and public delegated prefix (PDP)), Private NAT, non-RFC 1918, managed services).

● Planning a global or regional network environment.

● Planning the firewall strategy (e.g., VPC firewall rules, Cloud Next Generation Firewall, hierarchical firewall rules).

● Planning custom routes (static or policy-based) for third-party device insertion (e.g., network virtual appliance).

1.3 Designing a resilient and performant hybrid and multi-cloud network. Considerations include:

● Designing for datacenter connectivity including bandwidth constraints (e.g., Dedicated Interconnect, Partner Interconnect, Cloud VPN).

● Designing for multi-cloud connectivity (e.g., Cloud VPN, Cross-Cloud Interconnect).

● Designing for branch office connectivity (e.g., IPSec VPN, SD-WAN appliances).

● Choosing when to use Direct Peering or a Verified Peering Provider.

● Designing high-availability and disaster recovery connectivity strategies.

● Selecting regional or global dynamic routing mode.

● Accessing multiple VPCs from on-premises locations (e.g., Shared VPC, multi-VPC peering and Network Connectivity Center topologies).

● Accessing Google Services and APIs privately from on-premises locations (e.g., Private Service Connect for Google APIs).

● Accessing Google-managed services through VPC Network Peering connections (e.g., private services access, Service Networking).

● Designing the IP address space across on-premises locations and cloud environments (e.g., internal ranges, planning to avoid overlaps).

● Designing the DNS peering and forwarding strategy (e.g., DNS forwarding path).

1.4 Designing an IP addressing plan for Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE). Considerations include:

● Choosing between public or private cluster nodes and node pools.

● Choosing between public or private control plane endpoints.

● Choosing between GKE Autopilot mode or Standard mode.

● Planning subnets and alias IPs.

● Selecting RFC 1918, non-RFC 1918, and/or privately used public IP (PUPI) addresses.

● Planning for IPv6.

Section 2: Implementing Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) networks (~22% of the exam)

2.1 Configuring VPCs. Considerations include:

● Creating Google Cloud VPC resources (e.g., networks, subnets, firewall rules or policy, private services access subnet).

● Configuring VPC Network Peering.

● Creating a Shared VPC network and sharing subnets with other projects.

● Configuring API access to Google services (e.g., Private Google Access, public interfaces).

● Expanding VPC subnet ranges after creation.

2.2 Configuring VPC routing. Considerations include:

● Setting up static and dynamic routing.

● Configuring global or regional dynamic routing.

● Implementing routing using network tags and priority.

● Implementing an internal load balancer as a next hop.

● Configuring custom route import/export over VPC Network Peering.

● Configuring Policy-based Routing.

2.3 Configuring Network Connectivity Center. Considerations include:

● Managing VPC topology (e.g., star topology, hub and spokes, mesh topology).

● Implementing Private NAT.

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

● Creating VPC-native clusters using alias IPs.

● Setting up clusters with Shared VPC.

● Configuring private clusters and private control plane endpoints.

● Adding authorized networks for cluster control plane endpoints.

● Configuring Cloud Service Mesh.

● Enabling GKE Dataplane V2.

● Configuring source NAT (SNAT) and IP Masquerade policies.

● Creating GKE network policies.

● Configuring Pod ranges and service ranges, and deploying additional Pod ranges for GKE clusters.

2.5 Configuring and managing Cloud Next Generation Firewall (NGFW) rules. Considerations include:

● Creating the firewall rules and regional/global policies.

● Mapping target network tags, service accounts, and secure tags.

● Migrating from firewall rules to firewall policies.

● Configuring firewall rule criteria (e.g., rule priority, network protocols, ingress and egress rules).

● Configuring Firewall Rules Logging.

● Configuring hierarchical firewall policies.

● Configuring the intrusion prevention service (IPS).

● Implementing fully qualified domain name (FQDN) firewall objects.

Section 3: Configuring managed network services (~21% of the exam)

3.1 Configuring load balancing. Considerations include:

● Configuring backend services (e.g., network endpoint groups (NEGs), managed instance groups).

● Configuring backends and backend services with the balancing method (e.g., RPS, CPU, custom), session affinity, and serving capacity.

● Configuring URL maps.

● Configuring forwarding rules.

● Defining firewall rules to allow traffic and health checks to backend services.

● Creating health checks for backend services and target instance groups.

● Configuring protocol forwarding.

● Accommodating workload increases by using autoscaling or manual scaling.

● Configuring load balancers for GKE (e.g., GKE Gateway controller, GKE Ingress controller, NEG).

● Setting up traffic management on Application Load Balancers (e.g., traffic splitting, traffic mirroring, URL rewrites).

3.2 Configuring Google Cloud Armor policies. Considerations include:

● Configuring security policies.

● Implementing web application firewall (WAF) rules (e.g., SQL injection, cross-site scripting, remote file inclusion).

● Attaching security policies to load balancer backends.

● Configuring advanced network DDoS protection.

● Configuring edge and network edge security policies.

● Configuring Adaptive Protection.

● Configuring rate limiting.

● Configuring bot management.

● Applying Google Threat Intelligence.

3.3 Configuring Cloud CDN. Considerations include:

● Setting up Cloud CDN for supported origins (e.g., managed instance groups, Cloud Storage buckets, Cloud Run).

● Setting up Cloud CDN for external backends (internet NEGs) and third-party object storage.

● Invalidating cached content.

● Configuring signed URLs.

3.4 Configuring and maintaining Cloud DNS. Considerations include:

● Managing Cloud DNS zones and records.

● Migrating to Cloud DNS.

● Enabling DNS Security Extensions (DNSSEC).

● Configuring DNS forwarding and DNS server policies.

● Integrating on-premises DNS with Google Cloud.

● Using split-horizon DNS.

● Setting up DNS peering.

● Configuring Cloud DNS and external-DNS operator for GKE.

3.5 Configuring and securing internet egress traffic. Considerations include:

● Assigning NAT IP addresses (e.g., automatic, manual).

● Configuring port allocations (e.g., static, dynamic).

● Customizing timeouts.

● Configuring organization policy constraints for Cloud NAT.

● Configuring Private NAT.

● Configuring Secure Web Proxy.

3.6 Configuring network packet inspection. Considerations include:

● Routing and inspecting inter-VPC traffic using multi-NIC VMs (e.g., next-generation firewall appliances).

● Configuring an internal load balancer as a next hop for highly available multi-NIC VM routing.

● Enabling Layer 7 packet inspection in Cloud NGFW.

Section 4: Implementing hybrid network interconnectivity (~18% of the exam)

4.1 Configuring Cloud Interconnect. Considerations include:

● Creating Dedicated Interconnect connections and configuring VLAN attachments.

● Creating Partner Interconnect connections and configuring VLAN attachments.

● Creating Cross-Cloud Interconnect connections and configuring VLAN attachments.

● Setting up and enabling MACsec.

● Configuring HA VPN over Cloud Interconnect.

4.2 Configuring a site-to-site IPSec VPN. Considerations include:

● Configuring HA VPN.

● Configuring Classic VPN (e.g., route-based, policy-based).

4.3 Configuring Cloud Router. Considerations include:

● Implementing Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) attributes (e.g., ASN, route priority/MED, link-local addresses, authentication).

● Configuring Bidirectional Forwarding Detection (BFD).

● Creating custom advertised routes and custom learned routes.

4.4 Configuring Network Connectivity Center. Considerations include:

● Creating hybrid spokes (e.g., VPN, Cloud Interconnect).

● Establishing site-to-site data transfer.

● Creating Router appliances (RAs).

Section 5: Managing, monitoring, and troubleshooting network operations (~13% of the exam)

5.1 Logging and monitoring with Google Cloud Observability. Considerations include:

● Enabling and reviewing logs for networking components (e.g., Cloud VPN, Cloud Router, VPC Service Controls, Cloud NGFW, Firewall Insights, VPC Flow Logs, Cloud DNS, Cloud NAT).

● Monitoring metrics of networking components (e.g., Cloud VPN, Cloud Interconnect and VLAN attachments, Cloud Router, load balancers, Google Cloud Armor, Cloud NAT).

5.2 Maintaining and troubleshooting connectivity issues. Considerations include:

● Draining and redirecting traffic flows with Application Load Balancers.

● Tuning and troubleshooting Cloud NGFW rules or policies.

● Managing and troubleshooting VPNs.

● Troubleshooting Cloud Router BGP peering issues.

● Troubleshooting with VPC Flow Logs, firewall logs, and Packet Mirroring.

5.3 Using Network Intelligence Center to monitor and troubleshoot common networking issues. Considerations include:

● Using Network Topology to visualize throughput and traffic flows.

● Using Connectivity Tests to diagnose route and firewall misconfigurations.

● Using Performance Dashboard to identify packet loss and latency (e.g., Google-wide, project scoped).

● Using Firewall Insights to monitor rule hit count and identify shadowed rules.

● Using Network Analyzer to identify network failures, suboptimal configurations, and utilization warnings.