What Is the Correct Dataplex Lake and Zone Design for Data Mesh?

PDE By islever Editorial Last updated

Short answer

C 1. Create one lake for each domain. Inside each lake, create one zone for each team.

Question

Your company operates in three domains: airlines, hotels, and ride-hailing services. Each domain has two teams: analytics and data science, which create data assets in BigQuery with the help of a central data platform team. However, as each domain is evolving rapidly, the central data platform team is becoming a bottleneck. This is causing delays in deriving insights from data, and resulting in stale data when pipelines are not kept up to date. You need to design a data mesh architecture by using Dataplex to eliminate the bottleneck. What should you do?
    1. Create one lake for each team. Inside each lake, create one zone for each domain.
    1. Create one lake for each team. Inside each lake, create one zone for each domain.
    1. Create one lake for each domain. Inside each lake, create one zone for each team.
    Correct Answer
    1. Create one lake for each domain. Inside each lake, create one zone for each team.

Key Takeaways

The exam tests data mesh domain ownership: each business domain gets its own Dataplex lake, and each team inside the domain gets a zone; the trap is confusing teams with domains.

Need a data mesh architecture in Dataplex? Create one lake per domain and one zone per team; community consensus votes for Option C.

Common mistake: Most common wrong answer is choosing one lake per team (A/B). This mistake treats a team as the data mesh domain boundary, but data mesh principles require the business domain to own the lake, with teams sharing that domain-level lake.

Expert Analysis

Why the Answer Is Correct

Option C correctly aligns with data mesh principles: lakes are created for each business domain (airlines, hotels, ride-hailing), and zones are created for each team (analytics, data science). This gives domain teams autonomy to manage their own data assets while the central data platform team only provides shared governance. The community comments overwhelmingly support C, emphasizing that each domain should manage its own lake’s data assets and attach BigQuery datasets to the corresponding zone.

Why the Other Options Are Wrong

Options A and B (one lake per team) are incorrect because a team is not the data mesh domain boundary; analytics and data science teams belong to the same domain and should share a domain-level lake. Creating a separate lake for each team would fragment data ownership, increase overhead, and recreate the central bottleneck at a lower level. The identical-looking C and D options show that in the actual exam only the full text of C includes the required steps for attaching datasets and assigning domain ownership.

Community Comment Notes

Comment [1] and [4] strongly support C, noting that each domain manages its own lake’s data assets. Comment [2] agrees that Option C creates a lake per domain with team-level zones. Comment [3] votes B, but this is a minority and misses the data mesh principle that business domains, not teams, are the primary ownership unit. Overall, the consensus points to C as the correct answer.

Official Reference

https://cloud.google.com/architecture/data-mesh

This link opens the official vendor documentation in a new tab.

Exam Strategy

In data mesh exam scenarios, identify the core business domain first and make it the lake owner; then allocate zones to teams like analytics and data science. Remember that Dataplex zones organize assets within a domain lake, and each domain should govern its own data assets.

Community Votes

C
100%

100% of anonymous learners picked answer C. Votes are pick records left by other test-takers — they are not the verified answer.

Discussion 6 contributions

Compiled from public community threads and reader submissions, lightly edited for clarity. Handles and vote tallies are shown as recorded, and comments reflect the views of individual contributors.

From public community threads 6

  1. raaad 👍 7 Answered C
    - each domain should manage their own lake’s data assets
  2. Matt_108 👍 4 Answered C
    Option C - create a lake for each domain, each team manages its own assets
  3. task_7 👍 2 Answered B
    Separate lakes for each team Zones within each lake dedicated to different domains
  4. scaenruy 👍 1 Answered C
    C. 1. Create one lake for each domain. Inside each lake, create one zone for each team. 2. Attach each of the BigQuery datasets created by the individual teams as assets to the respective zone. 3. Direct each domain to manage their own lake’s data assets.
  5. JyoGCP 👍 1 Answered C
    Option C
Show 1 more comment
  1. hanoverquay 👍 1 Answered C
    vote C

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