Be able to run kubectl drain with the right flags, write a Cloud Logging filter that matches a real log field, and choose the correct observability tool for a latency symptom. The key skill is matching the tool or command to the exact operational task described.
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Ensuring Successful Operation of a Cloud Solution — choose a session length
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Domain overview
This domain covers keeping deployed workloads healthy on Google Cloud: draining GKE nodes safely, building log-based metrics in Cloud Logging, and diagnosing latency with Cloud Trace, Cloud Monitoring, and Cloud Profiler. Questions present an operational symptom or maintenance task and ask you to pick the correct kubectl command, log filter, or observability tool.
Exam objectives
kubectl drain flags for DaemonSet pods and emptyDir volumes on GKE nodes
Log-based metric filters using Cloud Logging fields like httpRequest.status
Cloud Trace for analyzing latency of individual requests and API calls
Cloud Monitoring and Cloud Profiler for latency distributions and code hotspots
Using kubectl drain without --ignore-daemonsets, which fails because DaemonSet-managed pods cannot be evicted normally.
Forgetting --delete-emptydir-data, so drain stops on pods whose emptyDir data would be lost.
Confusing Cloud Trace with Cloud Monitoring when asked to analyze latency of one specific request.
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You need to monitor the uptime of an external HTTPS endpoint that is critical to your application. Which Google Cloud service should you use to create an uptime check?
2You have a Compute Engine VM instance that is currently running. You need to resize it to a different machine type. What must you do first?
3Your GKE cluster is running a deployment with a container image my-app:v1. You need to update it to my-app:v2 and monitor the rollout progress. Which commands should you use?
4You need to export logs from Cloud Logging to a BigQuery dataset for long-term analysis. What should you create?
5You are using Cloud Run and want to split traffic so that 10% of requests go to revision v2 and 90% go to revision v1. Which command should you use?
6You have a BigQuery table with billions of rows. You need to create a new table with the same schema and copy all data from the original table. Which approach is most efficient?
7Your application uses Pub/Sub to process orders. You notice that the subscription backlog is growing. Which tool should you use to analyze the latency of each step in the processing pipeline?
8You need to create a snapshot of a persistent disk attached to a running Compute Engine instance. The disk is used by a production database; you want minimal impact. What should you do?
9You want to receive notifications when a specific metric exceeds a threshold. Which Cloud Monitoring resource defines the condition and the action?
10Your GKE cluster nodes are running low on resources. You need to enable node pool autoscaling so that the cluster automatically adds and removes nodes based on demand. The node pool is named 'default-pool'. Which command completes this task?
11You have a Cloud Run service that you want to update to use a new container image. You also want to keep the previous revision available in case you need to roll back. Which command should you use?
12You are troubleshooting a slow application that uses multiple microservices. You suspect a particular service is causing high latency. Which TWO Google Cloud tools should you use to identify the root cause? (Select 2)
13You want to create a log-based metric to count errors from your application logs. Which TWO resources are required? (Select 2)
14You need to create a log-based metric that counts the number of errors in your application logs. What must you do first in Cloud Logging?
15You have a Compute Engine VM that is running a critical application. You need to change its machine type from n1-standard-4 to n2-standard-8. What is the correct procedure?
16Your GKE cluster has a node pool that you want to enable autoscaling on. The initial node count is 3, and you want the cluster to scale between 1 and 10 nodes. Which command should you use?
17You want to monitor the uptime of an external HTTP endpoint every minute and receive an email notification if the endpoint is unavailable for more than two consecutive checks. What should you do?
18You need to export all Cloud Logging logs from a specific project to BigQuery for long-term analysis. What should you create?
19You notice that a deployment in your GKE cluster is running an outdated image. You need to update the deployment to use the new image 'gcr.io/my-project/my-app:v2'. Which kubectl command should you use?
20You need to drain a GKE node for maintenance. The node is running a DaemonSet and some pods with emptyDir volumes. Which kubectl command should you use to safely drain the node without causing errors?
21You have a Cloud Run service that is experiencing high latency. You want to analyze the latency distribution of requests. Which Google Cloud tool should you use?
22You need to load a CSV file from Cloud Storage into an existing BigQuery table. Which bq command should you use?
23You are troubleshooting a slow Pub/Sub subscription. Which three steps should you take to diagnose the issue? (Choose three.)
24Your GKE cluster is running an older version of Kubernetes. You need to upgrade the cluster's control plane and node pools. Which two steps should you perform? (Choose two.)
25You need to set up an alerting policy to notify your team via email and Slack when a Compute Engine instance's CPU utilization exceeds 80% for 5 minutes. Which two resources must you configure? (Choose two.)
26You need to alert when the CPU utilization of your Compute Engine instance exceeds 80% for 5 minutes. What should you create in Cloud Monitoring?
27You are configuring an uptime check for an HTTPS endpoint that returns a JSON response. The check should validate that the response contains a specific field "status":"ok". Which uptime check option should you use?
28You need to create a log-based metric that counts the number of 5xx errors from your application logs. The logs are in Cloud Logging and contain a field "httpRequest.status". Which filter should you use when creating the metric?
29You need to export all Cloud Logging logs from your project to BigQuery for long-term analysis. What should you create?
30You need to change the machine type of a running Compute Engine instance from n1-standard-4 to n1-standard-8. What is the correct procedure?
31You need to attach an existing 100 GB persistent disk named 'my-disk' to a Compute Engine instance 'web-server-1'. What is the correct command?
32You have updated a deployment in GKE, but the new pods are crashing. You want to revert to the previous working version. What should you do?
33You need to drain a GKE node for maintenance, ensuring that daemonsets and pods using emptyDir volumes are handled properly. Which command should you use?
34Your Cloud Run service has a new revision that you want to gradually shift traffic to. You want to send 10% of traffic to the new revision and 90% to the current one. Which TWO steps are required? (Choose TWO.)
35You are troubleshooting a Pub/Sub subscription that is not delivering messages promptly. Which THREE factors should you investigate? (Choose THREE.)
36You need to be notified when the CPU utilization of any Compute Engine instance in your project exceeds 80% for 5 minutes. Which Cloud Monitoring feature should you use?
37You are using Cloud Logging and want to export all logs from a specific Compute Engine instance to BigQuery for long-term analysis. You create a log sink with a filter for the instance's resource type and labels. What additional step is required to complete the export?
38Your Cloud Run service is receiving a sudden spike in traffic. You want to ensure that the number of concurrent requests per container instance does not exceed 10 to avoid overloading the backend. Which configuration should you set?
39You are investigating high latency in your application deployed on Compute Engine. You suspect a specific API call is taking longer than expected. Which Google Cloud tool should you use to analyze the latency of individual requests?
40You need to resize a Compute Engine instance from n1-standard-4 to n1-highmem-8. The instance has a local SSD attached. What must you do before changing the machine type?
41Your team uses Cloud Logging to store application logs. You want to create a metric that counts the number of ERROR log entries per service. Which type of log-based metric should you create?
42You are deploying a GKE cluster with node autoscaling enabled. The cluster runs batch jobs that are sensitive to startup latency. You notice that during scale-up, new nodes take several minutes to become ready. Which action can reduce the time it takes for new nodes to join the cluster?
43Your BigQuery query is taking longer than expected. You want to estimate the query cost before running it and get a preview of how many bytes will be processed. Which bq command should you use?
44You have a Pub/Sub subscription that is accumulating a backlog of messages. Which Cloud Monitoring metric should you alert on to detect this condition?
45You need to drain a GKE node for maintenance. The node runs DaemonSet pods and pods using emptyDir volumes. Which kubectl drain command correctly handles these pods without causing disruption to critical system components?
46You need to set up log-based alerting in Cloud Logging to send notifications when a specific error pattern appears in your application logs. Which TWO components are required to accomplish this?
47Your application running on Compute Engine is experiencing intermittent high latency. You need to diagnose the root cause. Which THREE tools or services should you use to gather data? (Choose 3)
48An engineer needs to create an alerting policy in Cloud Monitoring that sends a notification when the 99th percentile latency of a service exceeds 500 ms for 5 minutes. Which metric type should they use?
49An engineer needs to monitor the external HTTP availability of a web application hosted on Compute Engine. Which Cloud Monitoring feature should they use?
50A company wants to export all Cloud Logging logs to BigQuery for long-term analysis. They create a log sink with a BigQuery dataset as the destination. After a few days, they notice that some logs are missing in BigQuery. What is the most likely reason?
51An engineer needs to update a Kubernetes Deployment's container image to version v2. They run 'kubectl set image deployment/my-app my-container=gcr.io/my-project/my-image:v2'. After a few minutes, they check the rollout status and see a failure. They want to revert to the previous image. Which command should they use?
52A company wants to split traffic between two revisions of a Cloud Run service: 90% to revision 'green' and 10% to revision 'blue'. Which command should they use?
53An engineer needs to enable autoscaling on an existing node pool in a GKE cluster. Which command should they use?
54A developer needs to query BigQuery using the bq command-line tool with standard SQL. Which flag should they include?
55An engineer needs to attach an existing persistent disk to a Compute Engine instance. They have created the disk using 'gcloud compute disks create'. Which command should they use to attach it?
56An application is experiencing intermittent high latency. Using Cloud Trace, an engineer identifies that the bottleneck is a Pub/Sub subscription with a large backlog. Which action would MOST directly help reduce the backlog?
57An engineer needs to create a Cloud Monitoring dashboard that displays CPU utilization for all Compute Engine instances in a project. Which TWO steps are required? (Choose 2)
58A company wants to automate the response to specific log entries by triggering a Cloud Function. Which THREE components are required? (Choose 3)
59An engineer is troubleshooting a Compute Engine instance that is unreachable via SSH. They suspect a firewall rule is blocking traffic. Which TWO actions should they take to diagnose the issue? (Choose 2)
60A site reliability engineer needs to be notified immediately when the error rate of a production microservice exceeds 5% over a 5-minute window. Which type of alerting policy should be used?
61You manage a Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) cluster and need to update the deployment 'web-app' to use a new container image tag 'v2'. You also want to ensure the update proceeds and, if it fails, roll back to the previous revision. Which set of commands should you use?
62You want to export a subset of Cloud Logging logs to BigQuery for long-term analysis. Which method should you use?
63A Cloud Run service is experiencing high latency. You suspect one revision is causing the issue. The service is configured to split traffic 90% to revision A and 10% to revision B. You want to gradually shift traffic back to revision A only. Which command should you use?
64You need to collect and analyze latency traces for a microservices application running on GKE. You want to identify which services are contributing to overall latency. Which Google Cloud service should you enable and use?
65You have a Compute Engine instance that is running a CPU-intensive workload. After monitoring, you realize the machine type needs to be upgraded to a larger CPU. What is the correct sequence to change the machine type?
66You are troubleshooting a Pub/Sub subscription that is not receiving messages as fast as they are published. You want to check if there is a backlog of unacknowledged messages for the subscription. What should you use?
67You have a GKE cluster with a node pool that needs to scale automatically based on load. The cluster was created with autoscaling disabled. Which command enables autoscaling on an existing node pool?
68You need to perform a rolling update of a GKE deployment and ensure that during the update, the new pods are ready before terminating the old ones. You have already set the update strategy to RollingUpdate. Which kubectl command sequence should you use to update the image and monitor the rollout?
69A Cloud Run service named 'my-service' is currently serving 100% traffic to revision 'rev1'. You deploy a new revision 'rev2' and want to gradually shift traffic so that rev2 receives 10% of requests. Which command should you use?
70You want to create a monitoring dashboard that shows a time-series chart of CPU utilization for a specific Compute Engine instance. Which THREE components do you need to configure? (Choose three.)
71A developer needs to check the latest logs from a Compute Engine instance to debug a failed startup script. They want to filter logs from the last hour with severity ERROR or higher. Which Cloud Logging query language filter should they use?
72You have a Cloud Run service that experiences intermittent high latency. You want to analyze the latency of specific request paths to identify bottlenecks. You enable Cloud Trace and instrument your application with OpenTelemetry. Which tool or feature should you use to view a waterfall diagram of latencies across services for a single request?
73You need to export all logs from Cloud Logging to a BigQuery dataset for long-term analysis. The export should include logs from all projects in the organization. Which TWO actions should you take? (Choose two.)
74You want to monitor the uptime of an external HTTP endpoint from multiple locations around the world. Which TWO steps should you take? (Choose two.)
75Your team manages a Compute Engine instance group that runs a stateless web application. You need to ensure that instances are automatically repaired if they fail health checks, and that the group scales based on CPU utilization. Which type of instance group should you use?
76You need to store application logs from a Compute Engine instance in a way that allows you to search and analyze them later. The logs should be retained for 30 days. Which Google Cloud service should you use?
77You are deploying a new version of a microservice to Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE). You want to minimize downtime and ensure that traffic is only routed to pods that are ready to serve requests. Which TWO actions should you take? (Choose two.)
78You have a Compute Engine instance running a web server. You need to allow HTTP traffic from the internet to this instance. You have already created a firewall rule that allows ingress on tcp:80 from 0.0.0.0/0. However, the instance is not receiving any traffic. You check the instance and see it has no external IP address. What should you do to allow external traffic?
79You are deploying a new version of an application to a Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) cluster. You want to ensure that the new version is rolled out gradually, and if any issues are detected, the rollout is automatically paused. You also want to be able to easily roll back to the previous version. Which GKE feature should you use?
80You are responsible for monitoring a set of Compute Engine instances that run a critical web application. You want to be alerted when the average CPU utilization across all instances exceeds 80% for more than 5 minutes. You also want to receive a notification via email and SMS. Which TWO actions should you take? (Choose two.)
81You have a Cloud Storage bucket that contains sensitive data. You need to ensure that all access to the bucket is logged, including data reads and writes, and that the logs are retained for at least one year. You also want to be able to analyze the logs using BigQuery. What should you do?
Be able to run kubectl drain with the right flags, write a Cloud Logging filter that matches a real log field, and choose the correct observability tool for a latency symptom. The key skill is matching the tool or command to the exact operational task described.
The Courseiva ACE question bank contains 81 questions in the Ensuring Successful Operation of a Cloud Solution domain, covering the 30% of the exam attributed to this domain in the official Google Cloud blueprint. Click any question to see the full explanation and answer breakdown.
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