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

Question 1

A company wants to migrate an on-premises PostgreSQL database to Google Cloud. They need a managed database service with high availability and automatic failover. The application uses many stored procedures and extensions specific to PostgreSQL. Which service should they choose?

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

Accepted Answer

Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL. Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL supports many PostgreSQL extensions and stored procedures. Cloud Spanner is not PostgreSQL-compatible; Firestore is NoSQL; Bare Metal Solution is for on-premises-like deployments, not managed.

Answer

Cloud Spanner

Answer

Bare Metal Solution

Answer

Firestore

Question 2

A team is using BigQuery for analytics. They have a constant query workload and want to reduce costs by switching from on-demand pricing to a flat-rate reservation. They have purchased a BigQuery flat-rate reservation. What additional step is required to use the reservation?

Accepted Answer

Assign the reservation to the desired projects using an assignment. The reservation must be assigned to a project, folder, or organization via a reservation assignment. Without assignment, the reservation is not used, and queries continue to be billed on-demand.

Answer

Enable flat-rate billing in the BigQuery settings

Answer

No additional steps; flat-rate is automatically applied to all queries

Answer

Create a new dataset and move all tables into it

Question 3

A company wants to run a stateful application that requires persistent storage on individual VMs. The VMs are not part of a managed instance group. Which Google Cloud storage option is best for this use case?

Accepted Answer

Persistent Disk. Persistent disks are durable block storage that can be attached to a single VM and persist independently of the VM lifecycle. Cloud Storage is object storage; Filestore is file storage; local SSDs are ephemeral and lose data on VM stop/termination.

Answer

Local SSD

Answer

Cloud Storage

Answer

Filestore

Question 4

A company needs to connect their on-premises data center to Google Cloud via a dedicated, high-bandwidth connection with low latency. They anticipate consistent high traffic. Which connectivity option should they use?

Accepted Answer

Dedicated Interconnect. Dedicated Interconnect provides direct physical connections between on-premises and Google Cloud, offering high bandwidth and low latency. Cloud VPN is over the internet; Carrier Peering is for enterprise customers; VPC peering is for connecting VPCs within Google Cloud.

Answer

Carrier Peering

Answer

Cloud VPN

Answer

VPC peering

Question 5

An engineer is tasked with creating a new VPC network for a production environment. The company requires the VPC to support multiple regions and allow custom IP address ranges for each subnet. Which VPC network mode should the engineer use?

Accepted Answer

Custom mode VPC. Custom mode VPC is correct because it allows the engineer to create subnets with user-defined IP address ranges in each region, giving full control over the network topology. Unlike auto mode, custom mode does not automatically create subnets in every region, so the engineer can tailor subnet placement and CIDR blocks to production requirements. This flexibility is essential for multi-region deployments where specific IP ranges are needed for each subnet.

Answer

Shared VPC

Answer

Auto mode VPC

Answer

Legacy mode VPC

Question 6

An organization needs to run a batch analytics job daily that processes 500 GB of data stored in Cloud Storage. The job runs for 2 hours each day and can tolerate occasional failures. The team wants to minimize compute costs. Which compute option is most cost-effective?

Accepted Answer

Compute Engine with preemptible VMs. Preemptible VMs are correct because they cost up to 80% less than standard VMs and are ideal for fault-tolerant batch jobs that can tolerate occasional failures and run for a bounded 2-hour window. The workload's tolerance for interruption and its daily, non-continuous schedule align exactly with the preemptible VM use case, minimizing compute cost.

Answer

Compute Engine with sole-tenant nodes

Answer

Compute Engine with standard VMs and sustained use discount

Answer

Compute Engine with committed use discount for 1 year

Question 7

A developer needs to create a Cloud Storage bucket that stores data for only 30 days and then automatically deletes it. Which feature should be used to achieve this?

Accepted Answer

Object lifecycle management. Object Lifecycle Management lets you define rules that automatically transition or delete objects based on age, creation date, or other conditions. Setting a lifecycle rule with an Age condition of 30 days and a Delete action causes Cloud Storage to automatically remove objects after 30 days, exactly matching the requirement.

Answer

Object versioning

Answer

Requester pays

Answer

Bucket lock

Question 8

A company has a private VPC with instances that have only internal IP addresses. These instances need to download updates from the internet. Which Google Cloud service should they use to provide outbound internet connectivity?

Accepted Answer

Cloud NAT. Cloud NAT (Network Address Translation) allows instances with only internal IP addresses to initiate outbound connections to the internet without exposing them to inbound traffic. It performs many-to-one IP translation and is the Google-recommended service for egress-only internet access from private VPC subnets.

Answer

Cloud VPN

Answer

Assign public IP addresses to the instances

Answer

Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP)

Question 9

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 10

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) in Cloud Storage let the customer create, manage, and rotate keys via Cloud KMS while Google handles the actual encryption and decryption of objects at rest. This satisfies the requirement for customer-controlled key management and rotation without the customer handling raw key material directly.

Answer

Use customer-supplied encryption keys (CSEK)

Answer

Use client-side encryption

Answer

Use Google-managed encryption keys

Question 11

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 (SUDs) are automatic discounts that Google Cloud applies to Compute Engine instances that run for a significant portion of the billing month. Because the VM runs 12 hours per day every day, it accumulates enough usage to qualify for SUDs without any commitment or action from the team. The discount is applied automatically to the invoice.

Answer

Preemptible VM discount

Answer

Committed use discount

Answer

Free tier discount

Question 12

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 13

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 a fully managed, high-performance NoSQL wide-column database designed for massive analytical and operational workloads. It excels at storing petabytes of data and delivering single-digit millisecond latency for high-throughput reads/writes (millions of ops/sec) when using row-key based access. Its sparse table design and automatic sharding make it ideal for time-series IoT data where the row key can incorporate a timestamp for efficient range scans.

Answer

BigQuery

Answer

Firestore

Answer

Cloud Spanner

Question 14

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 fully managed serverless platform that runs stateless containers and automatically scales to zero when there is no traffic, meaning you pay nothing when idle. It natively handles HTTP requests and supports rapid scaling based on incoming requests, making it ideal for a stateless web app with sub-2-second startup. The other options either do not scale to zero or require manual scaling configuration, leading to higher costs for sporadic workloads.

Answer

Compute Engine with managed instance group and autoscaling

Answer

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) Standard

Answer

App Engine Standard with manual scaling

Question 15

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 is a fully managed relational database service supporting MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server, offering strong consistency (ACID), automated backups, and a 99.95% SLA on the Enterprise edition. For OLTP workloads under 10 TB, Cloud SQL provides the best price-to-performance among the listed options. Cloud Spanner and Bigtable are significantly more expensive and designed for different scales and access patterns.

Answer

Bare Metal Solution

Answer

Cloud Bigtable

Answer

Cloud Spanner