Google ACE Ensuring Successful Operation of a Cloud Solution Practice Test 7 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A 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?

Choose an answer to begin — your selection is scored in the full session.

Accepted Answer

gcloud run services update-traffic my-service --to-revisions=my-service-00001=100. The `gcloud run services update-traffic` command is the correct tool for adjusting traffic distribution across Cloud Run revisions. Using `--to-revisions=my-service-00001=100` assigns 100% of traffic to revision A (my-service-00001), effectively removing revision B from the serving path. This is the supported, declarative way to shift traffic on a Cloud Run service without redeploying.

Answer

kubectl set traffic my-service --revision=my-service-00001=100

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gcloud run revisions delete my-service-00002

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gcloud run services update my-service --set-revision my-service-00001

Question 2

You 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?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Trace. Cloud Trace is Google Cloud's distributed tracing service, designed to collect latency data across microservices and visualize trace waterfalls so you can pinpoint which service contributes to end-to-end latency. It integrates natively with GKE and supports OpenTelemetry and the Cloud Trace agent.

Answer

Cloud Logging

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Cloud Profiler

Answer

Cloud Monitoring

Question 3

You 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?

Accepted Answer

Stop the instance, run gcloud compute instances set-machine-type, then start the instance. Changing a Compute Engine instance's machine type requires the instance to be stopped first, because the machine type determines the underlying host resources. The correct sequence is to stop the instance, run `gcloud compute instances set-machine-type`, then start the instance.

Answer

Run gcloud compute instances set-machine-type while the instance is running

Answer

Delete the instance and create a new one with the desired machine type

Answer

Use gcloud compute instances update to change the machine type

Question 4

You 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?

Accepted Answer

Use Cloud Monitoring to view the 'oldest_unacked_message_age' metric. The 'oldest_unacked_message_age' metric in Cloud Monitoring directly measures the age of the oldest unacknowledged message in a subscription, which is the definitive indicator of a backlog. A growing value means messages are accumulating faster than they are being acknowledged. This metric is part of the standard Pub/Sub monitoring metrics and is the recommended way to detect and quantify subscription backlog.

Answer

Check the Cloud Logging logs for the subscription

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Use gcloud pubsub subscriptions describe and check the ackDeadlineSeconds

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Check the Cloud Console Pub/Sub dashboard for the topic publish rate

Question 5

You 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?

Accepted Answer

gcloud container node-pools update my-pool --cluster=my-cluster --enable-autoscaling --min-nodes=1 --max-nodes=10. The correct command is `gcloud container node-pools update` with `--enable-autoscaling` and min/max node flags, because autoscaling is a property of the node pool, not the cluster, and it must be enabled on an existing pool via the update verb. The `--cluster` flag identifies the parent cluster, and `--min-nodes`/`--max-nodes` define the scaling bounds. This is the only option that both targets an existing node pool and uses the correct gcloud subcommand.

Answer

gcloud container node-pools create my-pool --enable-autoscaling

Answer

kubectl autoscale node-pool my-pool --min=1 --max=10

Answer

gcloud container clusters update my-cluster --enable-autoscaling

Question 6

You 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?

Accepted Answer

kubectl set image deployment/myapp myapp=gcr.io/myproject/myapp:v2; kubectl rollout status deployment/myapp. `kubectl set image` updates the container image on the deployment, which triggers the RollingUpdate strategy to create new pods and only terminate old ones once the new pods pass readiness probes. `kubectl rollout status` then blocks and reports the progress of that rollout until it completes or fails. Together they satisfy both the update and monitoring requirements.

Answer

gcloud container clusters upgrade my-cluster; kubectl get deployments

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kubectl edit deployment myapp; kubectl get pods; kubectl delete pod old-pod

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kubectl apply -f deployment.yaml; kubectl rollout undo deployment/myapp

Question 7

A 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?

Accepted Answer

gcloud run services update-traffic my-service --to-revisions=rev2=10,rev1=90. `gcloud run services update-traffic` is the dedicated command for changing traffic allocation between revisions, and the `--to-revisions=rev2=10,rev1=90` syntax assigns 10% to rev2 and 90% to rev1. This performs a gradual traffic shift without redeploying the service. It is the correct way to implement a canary or gradual rollout on Cloud Run.

Answer

gcloud run services update my-service --traffic=rev2=10%

Answer

gcloud run deploy my-service --image=... --traffic=rev2=10

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gcloud run revisions update rev2 --traffic=10

Question 8

You 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.)

Accepted Answer

Choose a time aggregation function (e.g., mean, max). In Cloud Monitoring, to create a chart you need to select a metric, a resource, and a time aggregation function.

Answer

Create a log-based metric for CPU utilization

Answer

Set up a notification channel to send alerts

Question 9

A 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?

Accepted Answer

resource.type="gce_instance"
timestamp>="-1h"
severity>=ERROR. The correct Cloud Logging query language filter uses resource.type="gce_instance" to target Compute Engine instances, timestamp>="-1h" to filter the last hour, and severity>=ERROR to include ERROR and higher severities. The syntax severity>=ERROR is valid and includes ERROR, CRITICAL, ALERT, and EMERGENCY. This combination precisely meets the requirement.

Answer

resource.type="gce_instance"
severity=ERROR
timestamp>="-1h"

Answer

resource.type="compute.googleapis.com/Instance"
severity>=ERROR
timestamp<"-1h"

Answer

resource.labels.instance_id="*"
severity>=ERROR
timestamp>="-3600s"

Question 10

You 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?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Trace Trace List and Trace Details. Cloud Trace Trace List and Trace Details provide a waterfall diagram that visualizes the latency of each request as it propagates through different services. This allows you to pinpoint bottlenecks by seeing the duration of each span in the trace. OpenTelemetry instrumentation enriches traces with custom spans, making this the correct tool for analyzing request paths.

Answer

Error Reporting

Answer

Cloud Monitoring Metrics Explorer

Answer

Cloud Logging Logs Explorer

Question 11

You 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.)

Accepted Answer

Create a log sink with destination type BigQuery dataset. Option B is correct because a log sink's destination must be set to a BigQuery dataset to route log entries into BigQuery for long-term analysis; the sink uses the BigQuery destination and requires a dataset to exist. Option D is correct because creating the sink at the organization level allows it to aggregate and export logs from all projects in the organization in a single sink, which matches the requirement to include logs from all projects. Option A is incorrect because a Cloud Storage bucket destination exports logs to Cloud Storage, not BigQuery. Option C is incorrect because log-based metrics create metric data for monitoring/alerting, not raw log export to BigQuery. Option E is incorrect because project-level sinks would need to be created per project and would not provide a single organization-wide export as required.

Answer

Create a log sink with destination type Cloud Storage bucket

Answer

Create a log-based metric to filter the logs

Answer

Create the sink at the project level for each project individually

Question 12

You want to monitor the uptime of an external HTTP endpoint from multiple locations around the world. Which TWO steps should you take? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Select multiple locations (e.g., us-west1, europe-west1, asia-east1) for the uptime check. Option D is correct because a Cloud Monitoring uptime check is the native resource designed to probe an HTTP(S) endpoint from Google-managed probers and report up/down status and latency. Option C is correct because an uptime check lets you select multiple geographic regions (e.g., us-west1, europe-west1, asia-east1) so the endpoint is tested from several locations worldwide, which is exactly the requirement. Option A is not appropriate because a log-based metric derives values from log entries and does not itself perform external HTTP probing from multiple regions. Option B is not appropriate because a Pub/Sub notification channel only delivers alerts; it does not create the monitoring check or provide multi-region probing. Option E is not appropriate because VPC flow logs capture IP traffic metadata within a VPC and cannot monitor an external HTTP endpoint's uptime.

Answer

Create a log-based metric for the endpoint response time

Answer

Create a notification channel of type Pub/Sub

Answer

Enable VPC flow logs for the endpoint

Question 13

Your 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?

Accepted Answer

Managed instance group. A managed instance group (MIG) is designed to automate the lifecycle of identical instances. It uses an instance template to create instances and can be configured with autohealing based on health checks, as well as autoscaling based on metrics like CPU utilization. This makes it the ideal choice for a stateless web application that requires automatic repair and scaling.

Answer

Regional managed instance group

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Instance group with autoscaling only

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Unmanaged instance group

Question 14

You 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?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Logging. Cloud Logging is the native Google Cloud service for log ingestion, storage, and analysis. It automatically collects logs from Compute Engine instances and other resources, retains them for 30 days by default, and provides a powerful query language for searching. Other services like Cloud Storage or BigQuery can be used for export, but they are not designed for direct log management.

Answer

BigQuery

Answer

Cloud Storage

Answer

Cloud Monitoring

Question 15

You 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.)

Accepted Answer

Configure a readiness probe for the pods.. To minimize downtime during a deployment, you need both a readiness probe and a rolling update strategy. Readiness probes ensure that only pods that are ready to serve traffic are added to the Service's endpoints, while rolling updates gradually replace old pods with new ones, maintaining availability. Together, they prevent traffic from reaching unready pods and ensure a smooth transition.

Answer

Configure a liveness probe for the pods.

Answer

Expose the deployment using a LoadBalancer service.

Answer

Set the pod's restartPolicy to Always.