Google ACE Practice Test 8 — 10 Questions

Question 1

An e-commerce application has a read-heavy database workload: 95% reads, 5% writes. The primary Cloud SQL instance is experiencing CPU saturation during peak read traffic. What is the most appropriate GCP-native solution that minimizes changes to application code?

Accepted Answer

Create Cloud SQL read replicas and route read queries to the replica endpoint.. B is correct because Cloud SQL read replicas are designed to offload read traffic from the primary instance, directly addressing CPU saturation during peak reads without requiring application code changes—simply route SELECT queries to the read replica's IP address. This is the most appropriate GCP-native solution for a read-heavy (95% reads) workload, as it horizontally scales read capacity while keeping writes on the primary.

Answer

Enable Cloud SQL high availability; the standby replica will serve read traffic.

Answer

Scale the primary Cloud SQL instance vertically to a larger machine type.

Answer

Migrate from Cloud SQL to Cloud Spanner for unlimited horizontal read scalability.

Question 2

Your application runs on GKE and needs to call the Cloud Translation API. You want to follow Google's recommended security practice for service-to-cloud-API authentication within GKE. Which approach should you use?

Accepted Answer

Configure Workload Identity to bind the pod's Kubernetes Service Account to a Google Service Account with Translation API access.. Workload Identity is Google's recommended approach for authenticating workloads in GKE to Google Cloud APIs. It allows you to bind a Kubernetes Service Account (KSA) to a Google Service Account (GSA), so pods can impersonate the GSA without managing or storing long-lived service account keys. This eliminates the security risk of key exposure and follows the principle of least privilege.

Answer

Download a service account key JSON and mount it as a Kubernetes Secret in the pod.

Answer

Grant the GKE node pool's service account `roles/cloudtranslate.user`.

Answer

Use the GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS environment variable pointing to a mounted key file.

Question 3

You are configuring a GKE Autopilot cluster. A developer reports that their pod keeps being rejected with: `Autopilot rejected pod: resource request 0.5 vCPU and 64Mi memory is below minimum`. What should the developer do?

Accepted Answer

Set resource requests to at least 250m CPU and 512Mi memory to meet Autopilot's pod minimums.. B is correct because GKE Autopilot enforces minimum resource requests per pod: at least 0.5 vCPU (500m CPU) and 512Mi memory. The developer's request of 0.5 vCPU (500m) and 64Mi memory meets the CPU minimum but fails the memory minimum, so setting requests to at least 250m CPU and 512Mi memory satisfies both thresholds. This is a fundamental constraint of Autopilot's managed infrastructure model, not a configurable limit.

Answer

Switch to GKE Standard cluster to remove resource minimums.

Answer

Add a LimitRange to the namespace to override Autopilot's minimum requirements.

Answer

Set `resources: {}` (empty) to let Autopilot choose the correct resource allocation automatically.

Question 4

A Compute Engine VM's boot disk is nearly full and the application is failing. You want to snapshot the disk first (for safety), then resize it online. What is the correct sequence of gcloud commands?

Accepted Answer

Snapshot the disk, resize the disk with `gcloud compute disks resize`, then grow the filesystem within the VM.. Option B is correct because you must snapshot the disk first to ensure data safety before making changes, then resize the disk using `gcloud compute disks resize` (which works on a running VM with live resize enabled), and finally grow the filesystem inside the VM to utilize the additional space. This sequence avoids downtime and preserves a recovery point.

Answer

Stop the VM, resize the disk, take a snapshot, restart the VM.

Answer

Resize the disk with `gcloud compute instances set-disk-auto-delete` to automatically expand the disk.

Answer

Create a new larger disk, attach it as a secondary disk, and move data using rsync.

Question 5

You are managing Terraform state for a GCP infrastructure project shared by a team of 5 engineers. You need to prevent simultaneous `terraform apply` operations from causing state corruption. What is the recommended backend configuration?

Accepted Answer

Configure the `gcs` backend in Terraform, pointing to a Cloud Storage bucket with versioning enabled.. Option B is correct because the `gcs` backend with versioning enabled provides both remote state storage and built-in state locking via Cloud Storage's object-level consistency model. When one engineer runs `terraform apply`, the backend acquires a lock by writing a lock file to the bucket; other concurrent operations are blocked until the lock is released, preventing state corruption. Versioning further protects against accidental state deletion or corruption by allowing rollback to previous state versions.

Answer

Store state locally on each engineer's machine and merge state files manually after each apply.

Answer

Use Terraform Cloud (HashiCorp) as the backend for state locking.

Answer

Use a Cloud Source Repository to store state files with branch-based locking.

Question 6

You are deploying a Cloud Run service revision that should initially receive 0% of traffic (for testing via a direct URL), while the existing revision continues to serve 100% of production traffic. Which `gcloud run deploy` flag achieves this?

Accepted Answer

`--no-traffic`. The `--no-traffic` flag on `gcloud run deploy` deploys a new revision but directs 0% of traffic to it, leaving the existing revision serving 100% of production traffic. This allows you to test the new revision via its direct URL without impacting live users. It is the correct and explicit way to achieve a zero-traffic deployment in Cloud Run.

Answer

`--traffic=0`

Answer

`--revision-suffix=canary` with no traffic configuration

Answer

`--min-instances=0 --max-instances=0`

Question 7

A managed instance group (MIG) is configured with autohealing using a health check. During a rolling update, several VMs become unhealthy before the new application version starts responding to health checks. The MIG deletes and recreates these VMs repeatedly, causing a deployment loop. How should you fix this?

Accepted Answer

Increase the `initialDelaySec` in the autohealing policy to give VMs time to start before health checks are evaluated.. Option B is correct because increasing `initialDelaySec` in the autohealing policy gives the new application version sufficient time to start and become healthy before the health check begins evaluating the VM. This prevents the MIG from prematurely marking VMs as unhealthy during the rolling update, breaking the deployment loop where VMs are repeatedly deleted and recreated.

Answer

Disable autohealing during rolling updates by removing the health check.

Answer

Switch from rolling update to canary update to reduce the number of affected VMs.

Answer

Reduce the health check interval and timeout to detect unhealthy VMs faster.

Question 8

You are enabling OS Login for a GCP project to manage SSH access to Compute Engine VMs. A developer cannot SSH to a VM despite having `roles/compute.osLogin` granted. The VM has OS Login enabled. What is the most likely missing configuration?

Accepted Answer

The VM metadata `enable-oslogin` is not set to `TRUE` at the VM or project level.. Option B is correct because OS Login requires the VM or project metadata key `enable-oslogin` to be set to `TRUE`. Even if the user has the `roles/compute.osLogin` role, OS Login will not function if this metadata is missing or set to `FALSE`. The metadata enables the OS Login agent on the VM to authenticate users via IAM permissions rather than local SSH keys.

Answer

The developer needs `roles/compute.instanceAdmin` in addition to `roles/compute.osLogin`.

Answer

The developer must generate an SSH key pair and upload the public key to the VM's authorized_keys.

Answer

The developer's account needs `roles/iam.serviceAccountTokenCreator` to authenticate via SSH.

Question 9

You need to prevent developers from creating Compute Engine VMs with external IP addresses in a specific folder. Developers must still be able to create VMs with internal IPs only. Which org policy constraint enforces this?

Accepted Answer

Apply the `compute.vmExternalIpAccess` org policy constraint set to deny all VMs.. The `compute.vmExternalIpAccess` organization policy constraint is specifically designed to control whether Compute Engine VMs can be assigned external IP addresses. By setting this constraint to deny all VMs in the folder, developers are prevented from creating VMs with external IPs while still being able to create VMs with only internal IPs. This is the correct, native Google Cloud mechanism for enforcing this requirement at the folder level.

Answer

Create a VPC firewall rule blocking all outbound internet traffic.

Answer

Remove the `compute.instanceAdmin` role from developers so they cannot configure network interfaces.

Answer

Configure the default VPC network to use internal-only routes.

Question 10

Your security team wants to monitor all privileged IAM changes in your GCP organization (e.g., when anyone is granted `roles/owner` or `roles/editor`). They need real-time notifications. Which approach achieves this?

Accepted Answer

Create a Cloud Monitoring alerting policy on the `iam.googleapis.com/SetIamPolicy` log metric.. Option A is correct because Cloud Monitoring can ingest log-based metrics from the `iam.googleapis.com/SetIamPolicy` audit log entry, and an alerting policy can be configured to trigger in near real-time when that log metric exceeds a threshold. This provides immediate notification of privileged IAM changes such as granting `roles/owner` or `roles/editor`.

Answer

Enable Security Command Center's Event Threat Detection for IAM changes.

Answer

Run a daily script using `gcloud projects get-iam-policy` and compare with the previous day's output.