Associate-Cloud-Engineer Exam Dumps - Google Cloud Certified - Associate Cloud Engineer

"...we recommend that you enable Cloud Billing data export to BigQuery at the same time that you create a Cloud Billing account. "https://cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/export-data-bigquery

https://medium.com/google-cloud/analyzing-google-cloud-billing-data-with-big-query-30bae1c2aae4

Comprehensive and Detailed In Depth Explanation:

The core requirements are secure access to a specific BigQuery dataset from a Compute Engine instance, using short-lived credentials, adhering to Google's best practices, and minimizing operational overhead.

A. Project-level IAM role: Granting the BigQuery Data Viewer role at the project level gives the service account broad access to all BigQuery datasets within that project. This violates the principle of least privilege, a fundamental security best practice, as the application should only have access to the designated dataset.

B. Hourly new service account with dataset-level role: While this aims to achieve short-lived credentials, the operational burden of creating, attaching, and managing IAM policies for a new service account every hour is significant and not a Google-recommended practice for routine access. It introduces unnecessary complexity and potential for errors.

C. Custom service account with dataset-level IAM role: This is the recommended and most efficient approach. You create a dedicated Google Cloud service account specifically for this application. You then grant this service account the necessary IAM role (e.g., BigQuery Data Viewer, or a more specific custom role) directly on the target BigQuery dataset. When the Compute Engine instance runs as this service account, the Google Cloud client libraries automatically handle the acquisition and rotation of short-lived OAuth 2.0 access tokens from the instance's metadata server. This eliminates the need to manage long-lived credentials (like service account keys) and ensures the application only has access to the intended dataset. This adheres to the principle of least privilege and minimizes operational costs.

D. Hourly new service account with project-level role: This option combines the high operational overhead of frequently creating new service accounts with the security risk of granting overly permissive project-level access. It is not a recommended practice.

Therefore, the most secure, cost-effective, and operationally efficient solution is to create a custom service account, attach it to the Compute Engine instance, and grant it the appropriate BigQuery IAM role specifically on the target dataset. The platform handles the short-lived credentials automatically.

Google Cloud Documentation References:

Creating and enabling service accounts for instances: https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/access/create-enable-service-accounts-for-instances - Explains how to create and associate service accounts with Compute Engine VMs.  

Granting, changing, and revoking access to resources: https://cloud.google.com/iam/docs/granting-changing-revoking-access - Details how to manage IAM policies and grant roles to service accounts on specific resources (like BigQuery datasets).  

BigQuery IAM roles: https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/docs/control-access - Provides information on the various IAM roles available for controlling access to BigQuery resources at different levels (project, dataset, table, etc.).

Best practices for using service accounts: https://cloud.google.com/iam/docs/best-practices-for-using-service-accounts - Emphasizes the importance of the principle of least privilege and avoiding the management of long-lived service account keys when possible (relying on the metadata server for short-lived tokens).

The best option is to instruct the external consultant to generate an SSH key pair, and request the public key from the consultant. Then, add the public key to the instance yourself, and have the consultant access the instance through SSH with their private key. This way, you can grant the consultant access to the instance without requiring a Google account or exposing the instance’s public IP address. This option also follows the best practice of using user-managed SSH keys instead of service account keys for SSH access1.

Option A is not feasible because the external consultant does not have a Google account, and therefore cannot use Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP) to access the instance. IAP requires the user to authenticate with a Google account and have the appropriate IAM permissions to access the instance2. Option B is not secure because it exposes the instance’s public IP address, which can increase the risk of unauthorized access or attacks. Option D is not correct because it reverses the roles of the public and private keys. The public key should be added to the instance, and the private key should be kept by the consultant. Sharing the private key with anyone else can compromise the security of the SSH connection3.

1: https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/adding-removing-ssh-keys

2: https://cloud.google.com/iap/docs/using-tcp-forwarding

3: https://cloud.google.com/compute/docs/instances/connecting-advanced#sshbetweeninstances

An external passthrough Network Load Balancer operates at layer 4 (TCP/UDP) and preserves the original client IP address. This is a key requirement stated in the question. It's also designed for external-facing applications that need to handle TCP or UDP traffic directly without proxying at the application layer.

Option A: An internal passthrough Network Load Balancer is used for load balancing traffic within a Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) network, not for exposing applications to the public internet.

Option C & D: Global and regional external proxy Network Load Balancers operate at layer 7 (HTTP/HTTPS) or use a proxy for TCP/SSL, which means they terminate the client connection at the load balancer and establish a new connection to the backend instances. This does not preserve the original client IP address by default (though there are ways to retrieve it via headers, it's not a direct passthrough).

Reference to Google Cloud Certified - Associate Cloud Engineer Documents:

The different types of Google Cloud Load Balancers, their operating layers (L4 vs. L7), and their capabilities, including client IP preservation, are thoroughly documented in the Google Cloud Load Balancing documentation, a critical area for the Associate Cloud Engineer certification. The distinction between passthrough and proxy load balancers is essential.

Navigate to Stackdriver Logging and select resource.labels.project_id=*. is not right.

Log entries are held in Stackdriver Logging for a limited time known as the retention period  which is 30 days (default configuration). After that, the entries are deleted. To keep log entries longer, you need to export them outside of Stackdriver Logging by configuring log sinks.

Ref: https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/gcp/best-practices-for-working-with-google-cloud-audit-logging

Configure a Cloud Scheduler job to read from Stackdriver and store the logs in BigQuery. Configure the table expiration to 60 days. is not right.

While this works, it makes no sense to use Cloud Scheduler job to read from Stackdriver and store the logs in BigQuery when Google provides a feature (export sinks) that does exactly the same thing and works out of the box.

Ref: https://cloud.google.com/logging/docs/export/configure_export_v2

Create a Stackdriver Logging Export with a Sink destination to Cloud Storage. Create a lifecycle rule to delete objects after 60 days. is not right.

You can export logs by creating one or more sinks that include a logs query and an export destination. Supported destinations for exported log entries are Cloud Storage, BigQuery, and Pub/Sub.

Ref: https://cloud.google.com/logging/docs/export/configure_export_v2

Sinks are limited to exporting log entries from the exact resource in which the sink was created: a Google Cloud project, organization, folder, or billing account. If it makes it easier to exporting from all projects of an organication, you can create an aggregated sink that can export log entries from all the projects, folders, and billing accounts of a Google Cloud organization.

Ref: https://cloud.google.com/logging/docs/export/aggregated_sinks

Either way, we now have the data in Cloud Storage, but querying logs information from Cloud Storage is harder than Querying information from BigQuery dataset. For this reason, we should prefer Big Query over Cloud Storage.

Create a Stackdriver Logging Export with a Sink destination to a BigQuery dataset. Configure the table expiration to 60 days. is the right answer.

You can export logs by creating one or more sinks that include a logs query and an export destination. Supported destinations for exported log entries are Cloud Storage, BigQuery, and Pub/Sub.

Ref: https://cloud.google.com/logging/docs/export/configure_export_v2

Sinks are limited to exporting log entries from the exact resource in which the sink was created: a Google Cloud project, organization, folder, or billing account. If it makes it easier to exporting from all projects of an organication, you can create an aggregated sink that can export log entries from all the projects, folders, and billing accounts of a Google Cloud organization.

Ref: https://cloud.google.com/logging/docs/export/aggregated_sinks

Either way, we now have the data in a BigQuery Dataset. Querying information from a Big Query dataset is easier and quicker than analyzing contents in Cloud Storage bucket. As our requirement is to Quickly analyze the log contents, we should prefer Big Query over Cloud Storage.

Also, You can control storage costs and optimize storage usage by setting the default table expiration for newly created tables in a dataset. If you set the property when the dataset is created, any table created in the dataset is deleted after the expiration period. If you set the property after the dataset is created, only new tables are deleted after the expiration period.

For example, if you set the default table expiration to 7 days, older data is automatically deleted after 1 week.

Ref: https://cloud.google.com/bigquery/docs/best-practices-storage

cell phones are sending UDP packets and the only that can receive that type of traffic is a External Network TCP/UDPhttps://cloud.google.com/load-balancing/docs/network

https://cloud.google.com/load-balancing/docs/choosing-load-balancer#lb-decision-tree

https://support.google.com/cloudidentity/answer/6262987?hl=en &ref_topic=7558767

(A) Object Lifecycle Management

Delete

The Delete action deletes an object when the object meets all conditions specified in the lifecycle rule.

Exception: In buckets with Object Versioning enabled, deleting the live version of an object causes it to become a noncurrent version, while deleting a noncurrent version deletes that version permanently.

https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/lifecycle#delete

(B) Signed URLs

This page provides an overview of signed URLs, which you use to give time-limited resource access to anyone in possession of the URL, regardless of whether they have a Google account

https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/access-control/signed-urls