Google ACE Planning and configuring a cloud solution Practice Test 4 — 15 Questions

Question 1

You are planning a GCP network for a company with offices in three regions: `us-central1`, `europe-west1`, and `asia-east1`. All three regions must communicate with each other, and traffic must NOT traverse the public internet. Each region has its own subnet. Which network design achieves this with the least management overhead?

Accepted Answer

Use a single global VPC with subnets in each region; traffic between subnets stays on Google's private network.. Option B is correct because a single global VPC allows you to create subnets in multiple regions, and traffic between those subnets stays on Google's private backbone network without traversing the public internet. This design requires no additional connectivity configuration, peering, or VPN tunnels, making it the simplest to manage while meeting all requirements.

Answer

Create three separate VPCs (one per region) and connect them with VPC Network Peering.

Answer

Set up Cloud VPN tunnels between each pair of regions.

Answer

Use Cloud Interconnect dedicated connections in each region and configure BGP routing between them.

Question 2

A startup is building a mobile app backend. Traffic is highly variable: 10 requests/second at night, peaking to 50,000 requests/second during business hours. The backend is stateless. Which compute option best handles this traffic variability with minimal cost and operational effort?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Run with concurrency and max-instances configured.. Cloud Run is the best choice because it is a fully managed serverless platform that scales from zero to thousands of requests per second automatically, handling the extreme variability from 10 to 50,000 requests/second without provisioning overhead. By configuring concurrency (e.g., 80 concurrent requests per container) and max-instances, you cap costs while Cloud Run's autoscaling adds or removes container instances based on incoming traffic, making it ideal for stateless workloads with minimal operational effort.

Answer

Compute Engine managed instance group with autoscaling.

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GKE cluster with Horizontal Pod Autoscaler.

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App Engine Standard environment with automatic scaling.

Question 3

You need to store application configuration data that changes infrequently (e.g., feature flags, database connection strings). Multiple services need to read this configuration at startup, and values must never appear in application code or container images. Updates to configuration should not require redeploying services. Which GCP service is most appropriate?

Accepted Answer

Use Cloud Secret Manager to store and retrieve configuration at runtime.. Secret Manager is designed exactly for storing sensitive configuration (connection strings, API keys, feature flags with sensitive values). Secrets can be accessed via API or SDK at runtime without being embedded in code or images. Secret Manager supports versioning, automatic rotation triggers, and IAM-controlled access. When a secret value changes, services can be configured to reload it without redeployment using Secret Manager's notification integration.

Answer

Store configuration in environment variables set at deployment time.

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Store configuration in a Cloud Storage bucket readable by all services.

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Use Cloud Firestore to store configuration documents that services read on startup.

Question 4

You are designing a data pipeline that reads from Cloud Storage, transforms data, and writes to BigQuery. The pipeline must process data exactly when new files land (event-driven), handle files up to 5 GB, and complete within 10 minutes. Which approach best meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Configure a Cloud Storage Pub/Sub notification → Cloud Function that launches a Dataflow job for each new file.. Option A is correct because Cloud Storage Pub/Sub notifications provide event-driven triggers for each new file, and launching a Dataflow job via a Cloud Function allows processing of up to 5 GB files within the 10-minute window. Dataflow’s autoscaling and streaming capabilities handle large files efficiently, while the Cloud Function acts as a lightweight orchestrator without processing the data itself.

Answer

Use a Cloud Scheduler cron job that scans Cloud Storage every minute and processes new files with Dataflow.

Answer

Use Cloud Functions triggered by GCS events to read and transform the 5 GB file directly.

Answer

Use BigQuery Data Transfer Service to load files from Cloud Storage on a schedule.

Question 5

A company's application currently runs on a single Compute Engine VM with a persistent disk. The application serves read-heavy traffic and the single VM is becoming a bottleneck. The application is stateless. Which change provides the most immediate horizontal scalability improvement?

Accepted Answer

Create a Managed Instance Group from the VM and configure autoscaling with a load balancer.. Option B is correct because creating a Managed Instance Group (MIG) from the existing VM and configuring autoscaling with a load balancer directly addresses the read-heavy, stateless bottleneck by distributing traffic across multiple VM instances. This provides immediate horizontal scalability, as new instances are automatically provisioned or terminated based on load, without requiring any application changes.

Answer

Upgrade the existing VM to a larger machine type (vertical scaling).

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Add more persistent disks to the existing VM to handle more I/O.

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Enable live migration on the existing VM so it can move between hosts.

Question 6

Your application exposes a REST API that external partners consume. You need rate limiting per partner (API key), usage analytics, and developer portal for onboarding. Traffic is currently 1,000 requests/day but expected to grow to 10M/day within a year. Which GCP service best fits these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Apigee API Management. Apigee API Management is correct because it provides built-in rate limiting per API key (via quota policies), detailed analytics dashboards for usage tracking, and a developer portal for partner onboarding and key management. Unlike simpler API gateways, Apigee is designed for enterprise-grade API management at scale, handling growth from 1,000 to 10M requests/day with features like monetization, traffic management, and security policies.

Answer

Cloud Endpoints with Extensible Service Proxy

Answer

Cloud Armor with rate limiting rules

Answer

API Gateway with a backend Cloud Run service

Question 7

You need persistent shared file storage for a legacy application running on multiple Compute Engine VMs that requires POSIX-compliant file system access (NFS). The workload is I/O intensive with files up to 100 GB. Which GCP storage service should you use?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Filestore (NFS). Cloud Filestore provides a fully managed NFS server that supports POSIX-compliant file access, making it the correct choice for a legacy application requiring NFS. It can handle I/O-intensive workloads with large files (up to 100 GB) by offering high throughput and low-latency access from multiple Compute Engine VMs simultaneously.

Answer

Cloud Storage FUSE mounted on each VM

Answer

Persistent Disk attached in ReadWriteMany mode to all VMs

Answer

Local SSD on each VM with rsync synchronization between VMs

Question 8

An e-commerce application has a read-heavy database workload: 95% reads, 5% writes. The primary Cloud SQL instance is experiencing CPU saturation during peak read traffic. What is the most appropriate GCP-native solution that minimizes changes to application code?

Accepted Answer

Create Cloud SQL read replicas and route read queries to the replica endpoint.. B is correct because Cloud SQL read replicas are designed to offload read traffic from the primary instance, directly addressing CPU saturation during peak reads without requiring application code changes—simply route SELECT queries to the read replica's IP address. This is the most appropriate GCP-native solution for a read-heavy (95% reads) workload, as it horizontally scales read capacity while keeping writes on the primary.

Answer

Enable Cloud SQL high availability; the standby replica will serve read traffic.

Answer

Scale the primary Cloud SQL instance vertically to a larger machine type.

Answer

Migrate from Cloud SQL to Cloud Spanner for unlimited horizontal read scalability.

Question 9

Your web application serves users globally. Static assets (images, JS, CSS) are stored in Cloud Storage. Users in Asia report slow load times for these assets. The application origin is in `us-central1`. What is the most cost-effective way to improve static asset performance for Asian users?

Accepted Answer

Enable Cloud CDN on the Cloud Storage bucket's load balancer backend.. Cloud CDN uses Google's global edge cache network to serve static assets from locations close to users, reducing latency for Asian users without requiring bucket replication or additional compute. It is the most cost-effective solution because it leverages existing Cloud Storage as the origin and only charges for cache egress and operations, avoiding the overhead of managing regional buckets or compute instances.

Answer

Replicate the Cloud Storage bucket to an Asia region and update DNS to route Asian users to the regional bucket.

Answer

Deploy Cloud Run instances in Asia regions to serve the static assets.

Answer

Increase the Cloud Storage bucket's replication factor to improve throughput.

Question 10

Your on-premises data center needs a dedicated, private connection to GCP with a guaranteed 10 Gbps bandwidth and SLA-backed availability. Internet-based VPN is not acceptable due to compliance requirements. Which connectivity option should you choose?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Interconnect Dedicated (10 Gbps). Dedicated Interconnect provides a direct, private physical connection between your on-premises network and GCP, offering up to 10 Gbps per circuit with a 99.99% SLA. Since internet-based VPN is not acceptable due to compliance requirements, this option meets the need for dedicated bandwidth and SLA-backed availability without traversing the public internet.

Answer

Cloud VPN with multiple tunnels for redundancy

Answer

Partner Interconnect via a carrier partner

Answer

Cloud Router with BGP peering over the public internet

Question 11

You are designing a GKE cluster for a workload that requires high-memory instances (768 GB RAM) for in-memory analytics. Standard machine types in GCP don't offer this configuration. Which machine family should you select for the node pool?

Accepted Answer

Memory-optimized (M1 or M2) machine family. The M1 and M2 memory-optimized machine families are specifically designed for workloads requiring large amounts of RAM, such as in-memory analytics, with configurations offering up to 12 TB of memory. Standard machine types like N2 do not provide 768 GB RAM instances, making memory-optimized families the correct choice for this high-memory requirement.

Answer

N2 machine family with custom vCPU and memory configuration

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Compute-optimized (C2) machine family

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Accelerator-optimized (A2) machine family

Question 12

Your application runs on GKE and needs to call the Cloud Translation API. You want to follow Google's recommended security practice for service-to-cloud-API authentication within GKE. Which approach should you use?

Accepted Answer

Configure Workload Identity to bind the pod's Kubernetes Service Account to a Google Service Account with Translation API access.. Workload Identity is Google's recommended approach for authenticating workloads in GKE to Google Cloud APIs. It allows you to bind a Kubernetes Service Account (KSA) to a Google Service Account (GSA), so pods can impersonate the GSA without managing or storing long-lived service account keys. This eliminates the security risk of key exposure and follows the principle of least privilege.

Answer

Download a service account key JSON and mount it as a Kubernetes Secret in the pod.

Answer

Grant the GKE node pool's service account `roles/cloudtranslate.user`.

Answer

Use the GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS environment variable pointing to a mounted key file.

Question 13

You need to choose between Cloud Storage storage classes for a dataset used in BigQuery for ad-hoc analysis. The data is queried approximately once per month. Which storage class minimizes storage cost while maintaining query availability?

Accepted Answer

Nearline storage class. Nearline storage class is the best choice because it offers the lowest storage cost for data accessed less than once a month (30-day minimum storage duration) while still providing sub-second access for BigQuery queries. Standard storage has no minimum duration but is more expensive for infrequent access, while Coldline and Archive have lower storage costs but impose higher retrieval costs and longer access times that are unsuitable for ad-hoc BigQuery queries.

Answer

Standard storage class

Answer

Coldline storage class

Answer

Archive storage class

Question 14

You are planning a Private Service Connect (PSC) configuration to allow your VPC to access a managed Cloud SQL instance over a private endpoint without exposing traffic to the public internet. What does Private Service Connect provide in this context?

Accepted Answer

PSC provides a private, internal IP endpoint in your VPC that routes to the managed service without traversing the public internet.. Private Service Connect (PSC) allows you to access Google-managed services (like Cloud SQL) by creating a private, internal IP endpoint within your VPC. This endpoint uses an internal IP address from your VPC's subnet and forwards traffic to the service without ever leaving Google's network, thus avoiding the public internet. Unlike VPC peering, PSC does not require you to manage peering relationships or worry about overlapping IP ranges.

Answer

PSC creates a VPC peering connection between your VPC and Google's service VPC.

Answer

PSC enables bidirectional private communication between your VPC and the service's VPC, similar to peering.

Answer

PSC replaces the need for a Serverless VPC Access connector when calling managed services from Cloud Run.

Question 15

A company needs to run a batch processing workload that processes 10 TB of data nightly. The job runs for 4 hours and can tolerate interruption with checkpointing. Cost must be minimized. Which Compute Engine pricing model is most appropriate for the batch VMs?

Accepted Answer

Spot VMs (preemptible pricing). Spot VMs (preemptible pricing) are the most cost-effective choice for batch workloads that are fault-tolerant and can handle interruptions via checkpointing. Since the job runs for only 4 hours nightly and can resume from checkpoints, Spot VMs offer up to 60-91% cost savings over on-demand pricing without requiring any commitment.

Answer

On-demand VM pricing with committed use discounts (1-year CUD)

Answer

Sustained use discounts applied automatically to long-running VMs

Answer

Standard on-demand pricing with no special configuration