Google ACE Planning and Configuring a Cloud Solution Practice Test 4 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company needs to store petabytes of time-series IoT sensor data and query it with single-digit millisecond latency at millions of reads per second. The data has a simple key-value structure with timestamps. Which Google Cloud database is MOST appropriate?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Bigtable. Cloud Bigtable is designed for exactly this use case — petabyte-scale, low-latency (single-digit ms), high-throughput NoSQL storage for time-series, IoT, and financial data. It scales horizontally by adding nodes. BigQuery is optimised for analytics (seconds-to-minutes latency), Cloud SQL is for OLTP (limited to tens of thousands of QPS), and Firestore is for document data with hierarchical structure.

Answer

BigQuery

Answer

Firestore

Answer

Cloud Spanner

Question 2

A developer wants to deploy a containerized web application that receives HTTP requests and can scale to zero when not in use. The application is stateless and has a startup time of less than 2 seconds. Which Google Cloud compute option is the most cost-effective?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Run. Cloud Run is a serverless container platform that scales to zero, charges per request, and is ideal for stateless HTTP workloads. It meets the startup time requirement and minimises cost when idle.

Answer

Compute Engine with managed instance group and autoscaling

Answer

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) Standard

Answer

App Engine Standard with manual scaling

Question 3

An organisation requires a managed relational database for an online transaction processing (OLTP) application with strong consistency, automated backups, and a 99.95% SLA. The database size is expected to be under 10 TB. Which service meets these requirements at the lowest cost?

Accepted Answer

Cloud SQL. Cloud SQL provides managed MySQL/PostgreSQL/SQL Server with automated backups, strong consistency, and a 99.95% SLA for zonal deployments. It is cost-effective for databases under 10 TB. Cloud Spanner is more expensive and suited for global scale.

Answer

Bare Metal Solution

Answer

Cloud Bigtable

Answer

Cloud Spanner

Question 4

A company wants to run a batch job that processes files from a Cloud Storage bucket and writes results to BigQuery. The job runs once daily and can take up to 30 minutes. Which compute option is the most cost-effective and requires the least operational overhead?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Run jobs. Cloud Functions is event-driven, but for scheduled batch jobs, Cloud Run or Compute Engine are better. However, Cloud Run offers serverless execution with per-second billing and scales down to zero. It is cost-effective for short-lived jobs and requires minimal operational overhead.

Answer

GKE Autopilot cluster

Answer

Cloud Functions (2nd gen)

Answer

Compute Engine with a preemptible VM

Question 5

A company has a VPC in auto mode and wants to create a VPN connection to an on-premises network using HA VPN. The on-premises VPN gateway supports only a single public IP address. Which configuration step is required to establish a functional HA VPN tunnel?

Accepted Answer

Configure the HA VPN gateway with only one interface and disable the second interface. HA VPN normally requires two interfaces (two public IPs) for redundancy. If the on-premises gateway supports only one IP, you can configure the Cloud VPN tunnel to use a single interface (interface 0) and disable the second interface. Alternatively, you can create a Classic VPN tunnel, but Classic VPN is not recommended. The correct approach is to use HA VPN with only one interface enabled.

Answer

Configure the HA VPN gateway with two interfaces and use BGP to load balance traffic

Answer

Use a Cloud Router with custom route advertisements to the on-premises network

Answer

Create a Classic VPN tunnel instead of HA VPN

Question 6

A user wants to estimate the monthly cost of running a Compute Engine VM with 8 vCPUs, 32 GB of memory, and a 100 GB persistent disk in us-central1 for one year. They plan to use the VM 24/7. Which tool should they use?

Accepted Answer

Google Cloud Pricing Calculator. The Google Cloud Pricing Calculator allows users to estimate costs for GCP services, including Compute Engine instances with specific machine types, persistent disks, and usage duration.

Answer

Cloud Asset Inventory

Answer

Cloud Billing reports

Answer

Cloud Monitoring

Question 7

An application running on Compute Engine needs to be accessible from the internet on port 443. The instance has an internal IP only. Which steps are necessary to allow internet traffic?

Accepted Answer

Use Cloud Load Balancing with an HTTPS load balancer to forward traffic to the instance. An internal-only VM cannot be reached directly from the internet. You need to use a Cloud NAT for outbound traffic, but for inbound traffic, you must either assign an external IP to the VM or use a load balancer. The most secure and scalable approach is to use an external HTTPS load balancer.

Answer

Configure a VPN from the internet to the VPC

Answer

Create a Cloud NAT gateway and a firewall rule allowing ingress on port 443

Answer

Assign an external IP to the VM and create a firewall rule allowing ingress from 0.0.0.0/0 on port 443

Question 8

A company uses Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL and wants to reduce costs for a development environment that is only used for 8 hours a day (Monday-Friday). The database is under 100 GB and does not require high availability. Which action is the most cost-effective?

Accepted Answer

Change the activation policy to ON_DEMAND. Cloud SQL supports activation policies: ALWAYS (runs 24/7) and ON_DEMAND (starts when a connection is made, stops after a period of inactivity). For development environments used only during business hours, ON_DEMAND can significantly reduce costs by stopping the instance when not in use.

Answer

Use a smaller machine type and add a read replica

Answer

Migrate to Cloud Spanner for better cost efficiency

Answer

Enable deletion protection and manually stop the instance after hours, start it before hours

Question 9

Which Google Cloud service is a fully managed, serverless data warehouse for analytics at petabyte scale, with built-in machine learning capabilities and automatic scaling?

Accepted Answer

BigQuery. BigQuery is a serverless, highly scalable data warehouse that supports SQL queries, automatic scaling, and integrated ML (BigQuery ML).

Answer

Cloud Storage

Answer

Dataproc

Answer

Cloud SQL

Question 10

A team needs to deploy a microservice that processes events from Pub/Sub and writes the results to Firestore. The service is stateless and should not incur cost when idle. The expected load is low but can spike unpredictably. Which compute service is the most cost-effective and operationally simple?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Functions (2nd gen) triggered by Pub/Sub. Cloud Functions is event-driven, scales automatically, and charges only while code is executing. It can be triggered by Pub/Sub messages, making it ideal for this use case. It scales to zero and handles spikes.

Answer

GKE Standard with a cluster autoscaler and a Pub/Sub sidecar

Answer

Compute Engine with a managed instance group and autoscaling based on Pub/Sub queue depth

Answer

Cloud Run for Anthos on-premises

Question 11

A company has a GKE Autopilot cluster and wants to run a stateful application that requires persistent volumes with high read/write throughput. The application is deployed in a single region and does not require multi-region redundancy. Which storage option is the best choice for the persistent volumes?

Accepted Answer

Compute Engine persistent disks (SSD) using StorageClass 'pd-ssd'. GKE Autopilot supports persistent volumes via Compute Engine persistent disks (PD) or Cloud Filestore. For high throughput, regional persistent disks (pd-balanced or pd-ssd) offer excellent performance. Cloud Storage is not a persistent volume. Filestore is file storage but is more expensive and adds network latency. Persistent disks are native and provide the best performance for stateful applications.

Answer

Cloud Filestore (NFS)

Answer

Bigtable

Answer

Cloud Storage FUSE

Question 12

An organization wants to set up a hybrid cloud connection between their on-premises data center and Google Cloud VPC. They need high availability (99.99% SLA) and support for dynamic routing. Which connection method should they use?

Accepted Answer

HA VPN with BGP. HA VPN provides a 99.99% SLA, supports dynamic routing via BGP, and offers two tunnels for redundancy. Dedicated Interconnect also offers high availability but is a physical connection with higher cost. Partner Interconnect is similar to HA VPN but also physical. Classic VPN has no SLA.

Answer

Cloud NAT

Answer

Dedicated Interconnect

Answer

Classic VPN with static routing

Question 13

A company is migrating a legacy monolithic application to Google Cloud. The application consists of a web frontend, a business logic layer, and a MySQL database. They want to minimise operational overhead and use managed services where possible. Which two services should they choose? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Cloud SQL for MySQL to host the database. Cloud SQL provides a managed MySQL database, eliminating database administration. Cloud Run or GKE can host the frontend and logic, but Cloud Run is serverless and reduces overhead. Compute Engine would require more management.

Answer

Cloud Functions for the business logic

Answer

Compute Engine to host the frontend and business logic

Answer

Cloud Spanner for the database

Question 14

A development team wants to deploy a containerized microservice that requires GPU acceleration for inference. They want to minimize cost while maintaining the ability to scale to zero when not in use. Which two services meet these requirements? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

GKE Standard cluster with GPU node pool and cluster autoscaler. Option C is correct because GKE Standard with a GPU node pool and cluster autoscaler allows the cluster to scale down to zero nodes when no pods require GPU resources, minimizing cost. The cluster autoscaler automatically removes idle nodes and adds GPU nodes only when GPU-accelerated pods are scheduled, meeting the requirement for scaling to zero.

Answer

Cloud Run

Answer

Cloud Functions with GPU

Answer

Compute Engine with GPUs in a managed instance group

Question 15

A company needs to store and analyze large amounts of log data (hundreds of terabytes) with occasional SQL queries. The data is rarely accessed after 30 days and must be kept for compliance for 7 years. They want to minimize storage costs. Which three actions should they take? (Choose THREE.)

Accepted Answer

Use Cloud Storage Object Lifecycle Management to move objects to Nearline after 30 days, then to Coldline after 90 days, then to Archive after 1 year. BigQuery is ideal for log analysis. For historical data, moving older data to lower-cost storage classes like NEARLINE or COLDLINE reduces cost. Partitioning and clustering improve query performance and reduce costs. Cloud Storage is an alternative, but BigQuery is better for SQL queries.

Answer

Store the data in BigQuery and set an expiration on the table to delete data after 30 days

Answer

Use BigQuery partitions based on ingestion time and set partition expiration to 30 days