What is VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) in GCP?
Answer
A GCP VPC (Virtual Private Cloud) is a global, software-defined network that provides private connectivity for GCP resources. Unlike AWS and Azure VPCs which are regional, a GCP VPC is global — subnets in the same VPC can be in different regions and communicate privately without VPC peering. Key components: Subnets: regional resources with a primary IP range; resources (VMs, GKE nodes) deploy in subnets. Firewall rules: stateful allow/deny rules for ingress and egress traffic. Routes: define how traffic is forwarded. VPC Peering: privately connect two VPCs. Shared VPC: share a VPC across multiple projects — host project owns the network, service projects deploy resources into it. GCP's global VPC is a significant architectural advantage for multi-region applications.