PCNE cheat sheet

Exam at a glance

Domain weightings

How much of the exam each domain covers. Spend your study time in proportion — the heavier the domain, the more questions you'll see.

Key terms

VPC

A VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) is a global, private, software-defined network in Google Cloud that provides connectivity for resources such as Compute Engine VMs and GKE clusters. VPC networks are global while their subnets are regional, and they can be auto mode or custom mode.

Shared VPC

Shared VPC lets an organization connect resources from multiple projects to a common VPC network in a designated host project. It allows service projects to use subnets from the host project so network administration stays centralized while project teams manage their own resources.

VPC Network Peering

VPC Network Peering is a feature that connects two VPC networks so resources exchange traffic using internal IP addresses without going through the public internet. Peering is non-transitive and each side independently controls which routes are exchanged.

Cloud Router

Cloud Router is a fully managed service that uses the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) to exchange routes dynamically between a VPC network and an on-premises or peer network. It is required for HA VPN and Cloud Interconnect to advertise and learn routes automatically.

Cloud Interconnect

Cloud Interconnect is a service that provides a dedicated, private physical connection between an on-premises network and Google Cloud. It comes in Dedicated and Partner variants and offers 99.9% or 99.99% availability SLAs depending on the redundancy topology.

HA VPN

HA VPN (High Availability VPN) is Google Cloud's IPsec VPN offering that provides a 99.99% availability SLA using redundant tunnels and two external interfaces. It uses BGP through Cloud Router for dynamic routing over the tunnels.

Cloud Load Balancing

Cloud Load Balancing is a managed service that distributes traffic across backends using global or regional load balancers. It includes Application (HTTP(S)), Network (TCP/UDP), and internal load balancers, each with backend services, health checks, and network endpoint groups.

NEG

A NEG (Network Endpoint Group) is a configuration object that specifies a group of backend endpoints for a load balancer. Types include zonal, internet, serverless, and hybrid connectivity NEGs, letting load balancers target VMs, containers, external services, or on-prem endpoints.

Cloud CDN

Cloud CDN (Content Delivery Network) is a service that caches content at Google's global edge locations to reduce latency for users. It works with external Application Load Balancers and supports cache modes, invalidation, and signed URLs or cookies.

Cloud DNS

Cloud DNS is a scalable, managed Domain Name System service that publishes and resolves DNS records for domains. It supports public and private managed zones, DNS peering and forwarding, split-horizon DNS, and DNSSEC.

Cloud Armor

Google Cloud Armor is a network security service that protects applications from DDoS attacks and web threats at the edge. It provides WAF rules, rate limiting, adaptive protection, and named IP allow/deny lists applied through backend security policies.

Cloud NAT

Cloud NAT (Network Address Translation) is a managed service that lets instances without external IP addresses initiate outbound connections to the internet. Because it performs source NAT only, it never permits unsolicited inbound connections, preserving the private posture of the instances.

Network Connectivity Center

Network Connectivity Center is a hub-and-spoke platform for managing connectivity between VPC networks and on-premises or other cloud sites. It uses a central hub with spokes such as VPN tunnels, VLAN attachments, or router appliances for site-to-site data transfer.

Private Google Access

Private Google Access is a VPC setting that lets VM instances with only internal IP addresses reach Google APIs and services. It keeps traffic to Google services off the public internet, and a variant extends this to on-premises hosts over hybrid connectivity.

Network Intelligence Center

Network Intelligence Center is a monitoring and troubleshooting suite for Google Cloud networking. It includes Connectivity Tests, Network Topology, Performance Dashboard, and Firewall Insights to diagnose reachability, latency, and firewall issues.