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GooglePCA
PCA Practice Exam — Professional Cloud Architect
Professional Cloud Architect asks you to design and justify: which architecture meets the stated business and technical requirements, how to migrate to it, how to secure it, and how to keep it reliable. Part of the real exam draws on case studies Google publishes, and questions here that refer to one link to Google's official case study. Practise across all six official sections with full 50-question papers and a score breakdown per section.
PCA exam at a glance
- Questions per paper
- 50
- Time limit
- 120 minutes
- Passing score
- Not published by Google
- Question format
- Multiple choice and multiple select
- Official exam fee
- USD $200
- Certification valid for
- 2 years
- ReadyForCert access
- 60 days · $8.99 AUD
- Free sample
- 20 questions
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What the PCA exam covers
Designing and planning a cloud solution architecture
Turning business and technical requirements into a design, choosing network, storage and compute, and planning migrations.
25%Managing and provisioning a cloud solution infrastructure
Configuring network topologies, storage and compute, and putting ML workflows and prebuilt AI APIs to work.
17.5%Designing for security and compliance
Identity and access, data protection, network security, and meeting regulatory and industry requirements.
17.5%Analyzing and optimizing technical and business processes
Delivery and testing processes, disaster recovery, stakeholder and change management, and cost optimisation.
15%Managing implementation
Advising development and operations teams, and working with Google Cloud through its APIs, SDKs and command-line tools.
12.5%Ensuring solution and operations excellence
Observability, release management, supporting production systems, quality control and reliability testing.
12.5%
A sample PCA question
One question written for this page, in the same style as the questions in the bank.
Designing and planning a cloud solution architecture
A company runs a stateless web application on Compute Engine in a single region. It must keep serving users if an entire zone fails, and its traffic varies widely through the day. Which design meets these requirements?
- AA regional managed instance group with autoscaling, behind an external Application Load Balancer. — Correct answer
- BA zonal managed instance group that uses a larger machine type.
- CTwo standalone VMs in the same zone, protected by scheduled snapshots.
- DA single VM with a startup script and live migration enabled.
About the PCA exam
How many questions are on the Professional Cloud Architect exam?
50–60 multiple choice and multiple select questions in two hours. ReadyForCert papers use 50 questions in 120 minutes.
Does the exam use case studies?
Yes. Google publishes the case studies the exam can draw on, and case-study questions make up roughly 20–30% of the exam. Questions here that rely on a case study link to Google's official document for it; questions about case studies Google has since retired are not included.
What score do I need to pass the PCA exam?
Google does not publish a passing score or your numeric result — you receive a pass or fail. Because there is no published bar, aim comfortably above a bare pass: ReadyForCert scores you against a 72% threshold so you have a concrete target.
How much does the exam cost and how long is it valid?
Registration is USD $200 plus tax where applicable, and the certification is valid for 2 years.
Are these the real Google PCA exam questions?
No. These are practice questions written against the current official exam guide. Google's exam content is confidential and the bank is rotated, so practising against leaked questions does not survive an exam refresh.
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