Google ACE Planning and Configuring a Cloud Solution Practice Test 6 — 15 Questions

Question 1

An organization needs to run a batch analytics job on BigQuery every night that processes terabytes of data. The job is critical and must complete within a specific time window. To optimize costs, they are considering using flat-rate pricing but want to minimize commitment risk. Which THREE factors should they evaluate?

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

Accepted Answer

The cost of on-demand query pricing for the same workload. The organization should evaluate B, the cost of on-demand query pricing for the same workload, because comparing on-demand BigQuery pricing against flat-rate commitment costs is the baseline needed to determine whether a reservation actually saves money for this nightly terabyte-scale job. They should also evaluate D, the number of slots needed to complete the job within the required time window, since flat-rate capacity is measured in slots and the reservation size must be sufficient to finish the batch analytics within the critical window. They should evaluate E, the availability of flex slots for short-term capacity needs, because flex slots provide a low-commitment, short-duration way to obtain dedicated BigQuery capacity, which directly addresses the goal of minimizing commitment risk. Options A and C do not belong: the number of Cloud Storage buckets used for staging is irrelevant to BigQuery flat-rate slot commitment decisions, and reserving dedicated Compute Engine hardware is a different compute service and does not address BigQuery slot capacity or pricing.

Answer

The number of Cloud Storage buckets used for data staging

Answer

The cost of reserving dedicated hardware for Compute Engine

Question 2

A company is deploying a web application on Compute Engine and wants to distribute traffic across multiple instances in different zones for high availability. They also need to terminate SSL/TLS at the load balancer. Which TWO services should they use together?

Accepted Answer

Managed instance group. Option A, a managed instance group, is correct because it provides the pool of identical Compute Engine instances spread across multiple zones that the load balancer distributes traffic to, and it also enables autohealing and autoscaling for high availability. Option B, an external HTTP(S) load balancer, is correct because it is a global, layer 7 load balancer that spreads client traffic across instances in multiple zones/regions and supports SSL/TLS termination at the load balancer via its target HTTPS proxy and SSL certificates. Option C, Cloud CDN, is not required here because it is a content-caching layer that integrates with the HTTP(S) load balancer but does not itself distribute traffic across instances or terminate SSL/TLS. Option D, an internal TCP/UDP load balancer, is wrong because it is a regional, layer 4 load balancer for internal traffic and does not terminate SSL/TLS or serve public web traffic. Option E, Cloud NAT, is wrong because it provides outbound internet access for instances without external IPs and has nothing to do with inbound traffic distribution or SSL/TLS termination.

Answer

Cloud CDN

Answer

Internal TCP/UDP load balancer

Answer

Cloud NAT

Question 3

A company wants to use Cloud Run to deploy a containerized API that requires up to 8 GB of memory per request. The API experiences unpredictable traffic spikes. They want to minimize cost while ensuring fast cold starts. Which configuration should they use?

Accepted Answer

Set min-instances to 1 and max-instances to a value that handles peak traffic with CPU throttled. Cloud Run supports up to 8 GB memory per container (as of 2024). Setting min-instances to a small number (e.g., 1) reduces cold starts, while max-instances limits costs during spikes. CPU boost can also speed up cold starts. Using CPU always allocated increases costs, so CPU throttled (default) is fine. The question emphasizes cost minimization, so setting a minimal min-instances is appropriate.

Answer

Use Cloud Run jobs instead of Cloud Run service

Answer

Deploy the container to GKE Autopilot with a single pod

Answer

Set max-instances to a high number and min-instances to 0 with CPU always allocated

Question 4

A developer needs to run a one-time SQL query against a large dataset stored in Cloud Storage in Parquet format. The query result will be used for ad-hoc analysis. They want to minimize cost and avoid provisioning any servers. Which service should they use?

Accepted Answer

BigQuery external table query. BigQuery external table query allows you to query data stored in Cloud Storage (including Parquet) directly without loading it, using BigQuery's serverless infrastructure. This minimizes cost because you only pay for the data scanned by the query, and you avoid provisioning any servers. It is ideal for one-time ad-hoc analysis of large datasets.

Answer

Cloud SQL import

Answer

Dataproc cluster

Answer

Compute Engine with Apache Spark installed

Question 5

A company plans to deploy a containerized application on GKE Autopilot. They want to ensure high availability by running multiple replicas across different zones. They also need to expose the application via a load balancer with SSL termination. Which THREE resources should they create?

Accepted Answer

Service. A Deployment (E) is the correct workload controller for a stateless containerized application, allowing the company to declare multiple replicas that GKE Autopilot spreads across zones for high availability. A Service (A) is required to provide a stable virtual IP and load-balance traffic to those pod replicas, and on GKE it also provisions the underlying Google Cloud load balancer. An Ingress (C) is needed to expose the application externally and to configure SSL/TLS termination using a managed certificate or a TLS secret, which is exactly the load-balancer-with-SSL requirement. A StatefulSet (B) is not appropriate because it is designed for stateful workloads needing stable network identities and persistent storage, which this stateless app does not require. A ConfigMap (D) only supplies non-sensitive configuration data and does not provide high availability, load balancing, or SSL termination.

Answer

StatefulSet

Answer

ConfigMap

Question 6

A company wants to store event logs from multiple applications in a centralized location for future analysis. The logs are written frequently (thousands per second) and need to be retained for 90 days. The data is write-once, read-rarely. Which storage class and lifecycle rule combination is most cost-effective?

Accepted Answer

Set default storage class to Coldline and use lifecycle rule to delete after 90 days. For write-once, read-rarely data, Coldline storage class is cost-effective for data accessed less than once per 90 days. Set a lifecycle rule to delete objects after 90 days. Alternatively, use Standard for the first 30 days then move to Coldline, but the question asks for a combination. The simplest is to set the default storage class to Coldline and a lifecycle rule to delete at 90 days.

Answer

Set default storage class to Archive and use lifecycle rule to delete after 90 days

Answer

Set default storage class to Standard and use lifecycle rule to delete after 90 days

Answer

Set default storage class to Nearline and use lifecycle rule to delete after 90 days

Question 7

A company is planning a lift-and-shift migration of an on-premises monolithic application to Google Cloud. The application runs on a single server and requires a specific kernel module that is not supported by Google Cloud's container-optimized OS. Which compute service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Compute Engine. Compute Engine offers full control over the VM, including choice of OS and kernel modules. GKE and Cloud Run use container-optimized OS, and Cloud Functions is serverless and unsuitable for a monolithic app.

Answer

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)

Answer

Cloud Run

Answer

Cloud Functions

Question 8

A developer needs to deploy a containerized web application that experiences unpredictable traffic patterns, including long periods of no traffic. They want to minimize costs and only pay for resources when the application is serving requests. Which Google Cloud compute service is most suitable?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Run. Cloud Run is a serverless container platform that scales to zero when not in use, charging only for resources during request processing.

Answer

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) Standard

Answer

Compute Engine with managed instance groups

Answer

Cloud Functions

Question 9

A company is migrating a PostgreSQL database to Cloud SQL. They need high availability with automatic failover and a read replica for reporting queries that must not impact the primary. Which Cloud SQL configuration should they choose?

Accepted Answer

High Availability (HA) configuration with a read replica. Cloud SQL High Availability (HA) configuration provides a standby instance in a different zone with automatic failover, satisfying the HA requirement. Adding a read replica offloads reporting queries from the primary, ensuring they do not impact production performance. This combination meets both the HA and read-scaling needs.

Answer

High Availability (HA) configuration with automatic storage increase

Answer

Single zone instance with a failover replica

Answer

Single zone instance with cross-region replication

Question 10

An organization has a VPC with private instances that need outbound internet access for software updates. The instances have no external IP addresses. Which Google Cloud service should be configured?

Accepted Answer

Cloud NAT. To enable outbound internet access for private VM instances that have no external IP addresses, you configure Cloud NAT. Cloud NAT uses a NAT gateway to provide source network address translation (SNAT) so that instances can reach the internet for updates while remaining unreachable from the internet.

Answer

VPC firewall rules

Answer

Cloud Load Balancing

Answer

Cloud VPN

Question 11

A data analyst needs to run complex analytical queries on a large dataset (10 TB) stored in Cloud Storage. They want to use a serverless query engine that charges based on the amount of data processed. Which Google Cloud service should they use?

Accepted Answer

BigQuery. BigQuery is Google Cloud's fully managed, serverless data warehouse that supports ANSI SQL analytical queries over petabyte-scale datasets and charges on-demand based on bytes processed. It is designed exactly for the scenario of running complex analytics on large datasets without provisioning infrastructure. Its columnar storage and Dremel engine deliver high-performance queries at scale.

Answer

Cloud SQL

Answer

Bigtable

Answer

Dataproc

Question 12

A company needs to store and serve user-generated content such as images and videos. The data must be accessible globally with low latency. Which Google Cloud storage service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Storage. Cloud Storage is correct because it is Google Cloud's object storage service, designed to store and serve unstructured content like images and videos at global scale with low latency via edge caching and multi-region buckets. It offers HTTP/HTTPS access, signed URLs, and integration with Cloud CDN, making it the standard choice for user-generated media. No other listed service provides globally distributed object storage with this accessibility.

Answer

Persistent Disk

Answer

Cloud Filestore

Answer

Local SSD

Question 13

A company needs to deploy a web application on Google Cloud that requires high availability across multiple regions. Select TWO services that can help achieve this.

Accepted Answer

Global HTTP(S) Load Balancing. Global HTTP(S) Load Balancing distributes traffic across regions, and Cloud SQL with cross-region replication provides database redundancy. Compute Engine instances in multiple regions serve traffic, and load balancing handles failover.

Answer

Cloud VPN

Answer

Cloud NAT

Answer

Cloud CDN

Question 14

A company wants to migrate a large on-premises MySQL database to Cloud SQL with minimal downtime. Which TWO steps should they take?

Accepted Answer

Set up a Cloud VPN connection between on-premises and Google Cloud. Database Migration Service (DMS) can migrate with minimal downtime using CDC. For the final cutover, a brief write-stop is required to ensure consistency.

Answer

Configure a read replica on-premises and promote it in Google Cloud

Answer

Use gcloud sql import command for the final migration

Answer

Export the database to a SQL dump file and import it to Cloud SQL

Question 15

A startup is planning its first Google Cloud deployment for a stateless containerized API. The team has no Kubernetes experience and wants to minimize operational overhead while paying only for resources used during requests. The API must scale automatically, including down to zero when there is no traffic. Which Google Cloud service should they choose?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Run. Cloud Run is the serverless container platform that scales to zero and bills only for request handling and resources consumed, with no cluster or VM management. It fits a stateless API that has idle periods and a team without Kubernetes skills, satisfying both the operational and cost requirements.

Answer

App Engine flexible environment

Answer

Compute Engine managed instance group with autoscaling

Answer

Google Kubernetes Engine Autopilot