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

Question 1

An organization wants to migrate its on-premises MySQL database to Google Cloud. The database is 2 TB and used by a critical application with read replicas for reporting. The team needs minimal downtime and the ability to fail back if needed. Which migration approach should they use?

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

Accepted Answer

Use Database Migration Service (DMS) to migrate to Cloud SQL. Database Migration Service (DMS) supports continuous replication with minimal downtime and can fail back. Cloud SQL import/export requires downtime. BigQuery is for analytics, not transactional DB. Compute Engine with MySQL is self-managed and more complex.

Answer

Lift and shift MySQL on Compute Engine and set up replication manually

Answer

Export the database to a Cloud Storage bucket and import into Cloud SQL

Answer

Stream data to BigQuery using Dataflow

Question 2

A solutions architect is designing a disaster recovery plan for a Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL instance. The primary instance is in us-central1. They need to automate failover to a different region with a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of less than 5 seconds. Which configuration should they choose?

Accepted Answer

Configure a cross-region read replica in us-west1. Cloud SQL cross-region replication uses asynchronous replication and typically has an RPO of a few seconds. A read replica in another region can be promoted in a disaster. Backups have higher RPO. HA within same region does not help for regional disaster. External replication is less managed.

Answer

Use Cloud SQL external replication with a Compute Engine instance

Answer

Deploy a high-availability (HA) configuration within the same region

Answer

Enable automatic backups and point-in-time recovery

Question 3

A company wants to run a stateless HTTP web application that experiences highly variable traffic, including periods of zero traffic. The application is packaged as a Docker container. The team wants to minimize operational overhead and pay only for resources consumed during request processing. Which Google Cloud compute service is the best fit?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Run. Cloud Run is serverless, scales to zero, charges per request, and runs containers from container images. Cloud Functions is for event-driven functions, not full web apps. GKE Standard and Compute Engine require managing servers and do not scale to zero.

Answer

Cloud Functions

Answer

GKE Standard

Answer

Compute Engine with managed instance group

Question 4

An organization stores sensitive data in Cloud Storage. They need to ensure that objects are encrypted at rest using a key that they manage and rotate themselves. Which Cloud Storage encryption option should they use?

Accepted Answer

Use customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK). Customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK) allow you to manage your own keys via Cloud KMS. Google-managed keys are default. Client-side encryption is done before upload. Supplied keys are also customer-provided but not managed via KMS.

Answer

Use customer-supplied encryption keys (CSEK)

Answer

Use client-side encryption

Answer

Use Google-managed encryption keys

Question 5

A developer is deploying a Cloud Function that processes messages from a Pub/Sub topic. The function takes 10 minutes to complete each message. The developer needs to ensure that messages are not lost if the function fails. Which Cloud Function generation and configuration should they use?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Functions (2nd gen) with an event-driven trigger from Pub/Sub and retry on failure. Cloud Functions (2nd gen) supports longer timeouts (up to 60 minutes) and event-driven triggers like Pub/Sub with retries. 1st gen has a max timeout of 9 minutes. Retry on failure is configured in the subscription. Background functions are 1st gen.

Answer

Cloud Functions (1st gen) with an HTTP trigger and a Pub/Sub push subscription

Answer

Cloud Functions (2nd gen) with an HTTP trigger

Answer

Cloud Functions (1st gen) with a background function and retry on failure

Question 6

A team is setting up a new project and wants to estimate the monthly cost of running a Compute Engine VM with 4 vCPUs, 16 GB memory, and a 100 GB persistent disk, using the Google Cloud Pricing Calculator. The VM will run for 12 hours every day for a month. Which discount type will automatically apply to reduce the cost based on usage?

Accepted Answer

Sustained use discount. Sustained use discounts automatically apply for VMs that run for a significant portion of a month. Committed use discounts require a commitment. Preemptible discounts are for short-lived VMs. Free tier is limited.

Answer

Preemptible VM discount

Answer

Committed use discount

Answer

Free tier discount

Question 7

An organization wants to migrate a 5 TB on-premises MongoDB database to Google Cloud. They need to minimize latency for write operations and support global users with strong consistency. Which three services or tools should they consider for this migration? (Choose 3)

Accepted Answer

Transfer Appliance. MongoDB Atlas is available on Google Cloud and provides global distribution with strong consistency. Database Migration Service does not support MongoDB natively. Bigtable is not compatible. Cloud Spanner is globally distributed and strongly consistent. Transfer Appliance is for large data transfers. BigQuery is not suitable.

Answer

Database Migration Service

Answer

Cloud Bigtable

Question 8

A developer wants to deploy a new application on Google Cloud. The application consists of a frontend service that serves web traffic and a backend service that processes images. Both services need to be containerized. Which two compute options are serverless and support container deployment? (Choose 2)

Accepted Answer

Cloud Functions (2nd gen). Cloud Run and Cloud Functions (2nd gen) both support container images and are serverless (no server management, scale automatically). GKE and Compute Engine are not serverless. Cloud Functions (1st gen) does not support containers.

Answer

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)

Answer

Compute Engine

Answer

Cloud Functions (1st gen)

Question 9

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 10

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 11

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 12

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 13

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 14

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 15

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