Cloud Digital Leader Practice Test 50 — 15 Questions

Question 1

Refer to the exhibit. A team deployed this Cloud Run service. During a load test, the service receives high traffic, but the number of container instances never exceeds 10. What is the most likely cause?

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

Accepted Answer

The maxScale annotation limits the maximum number of instances to 10.. The `maxScale` annotation in Cloud Run directly caps the maximum number of container instances that can be created. When the service receives high traffic but never exceeds 10 instances, it indicates that the `maxScale` annotation is set to 10, preventing further scaling even if demand increases. This is the most direct and likely cause among the options.

Answer

The minScale of 2 forces at least two instances, but not the max.

Answer

The containerConcurrency of 80 limits the number of concurrent requests per instance.

Answer

The CPU limit of 1 vCPU is too low to handle the traffic.

Question 2

A company has a batch processing job that reads data from Cloud Storage, transforms it, and writes to BigQuery. The job runs nightly and takes approximately 2 hours. The team wants to reduce costs by using a managed service that automatically provisions and de-provisions resources. Which service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Dataflow. Dataflow is a fully managed, serverless Apache Beam service that automatically provisions and de-provisions workers based on the job's workload, making it the best fit for a nightly 2-hour batch job where the team wants to avoid managing infrastructure. It supports batch and streaming, integrates natively with Cloud Storage and BigQuery, and charges only for the resources used during execution. This aligns exactly with the requirement to reduce cost through automatic resource lifecycle management.

Answer

Cloud Composer

Answer

Cloud Functions

Answer

Dataproc

Question 3

A power utility company collects electricity meter readings from 10 million smart meters every 15 minutes — generating billions of rows of time-series data per year. They need to query this data to detect anomalies and patterns. Which Google Cloud database is optimized for this massive-scale time-series IoT data?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Bigtable. Cloud Bigtable is a fully managed, scalable NoSQL database designed for large analytical and operational workloads, making it ideal for ingesting and querying high-throughput time-series data from millions of IoT devices. It supports sub-10ms latency on queries, automatic sharding, and seamless integration with Google Cloud's data analytics ecosystem (e.g., BigQuery, Dataflow), which is critical for detecting anomalies and patterns across billions of rows of meter readings.

Answer

Cloud SQL (PostgreSQL)

Answer

Firestore

Answer

Cloud Storage (CSV files)

Question 4

A developer wants to deploy a serverless application that runs code in response to HTTP requests and events from other Google Cloud services. They also need to store configuration and session data in a fast, in-memory data store. Which TWO services should they use? (Choose TWO)

Accepted Answer

Cloud Functions. Cloud Functions handles HTTP and event-driven triggers serverlessly. Memorystore provides managed Redis/Memcached for caching and session storage. Cloud SQL is relational and not in-memory. Cloud Storage is object storage. Bigtable is NoSQL but not in-memory.

Answer

Cloud SQL

Answer

Cloud Bigtable

Answer

Cloud Storage

Question 5

An organization wants to ensure that all projects in the organization have a specific IAM policy applied, such as restricting the use of certain machine series. They also need to enforce this policy on new projects automatically. Where should they set this policy?

Accepted Answer

At the organization node. Organization policies applied at the organization node are inherited by all projects under it, ensuring uniform enforcement across the entire hierarchy.

Answer

At the project level for each project

Answer

Using tags on individual resources

Answer

At the folder level for each environment

Question 6

A company uses Cloud Spanner for a global application. They need to ensure high availability and disaster recovery across regions. Which TWO actions should they take? (Choose 2)

Accepted Answer

Schedule regular backups using Cloud Spanner backup feature. Cloud Spanner's built-in backup feature allows you to create consistent backups of your database without impacting performance, and these backups can be restored to a different region for disaster recovery. This provides a reliable way to recover from regional failures or data corruption, ensuring high availability and DR across regions.

Answer

Deploy the database in a single region with backups

Answer

Configure read replicas in a different region

Answer

Use Cloud Memorystore to cache database queries

Question 7

A developer wants to deploy a containerized application that can scale down to zero when not in use and charges only for the resources consumed during request processing. Which Google Cloud compute service should they choose?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Run. Cloud Run is a fully managed serverless container platform that automatically scales instances down to zero when there is no traffic, and it bills only for CPU/memory consumed during request handling (with per-100ms granularity). This matches the requirement of zero-idle cost and pay-per-request processing exactly. GKE and Compute Engine both require at least one running node/VM, and App Engine Flexible keeps at least one instance running, so none of them can truly scale to zero.

Answer

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)

Answer

Compute Engine

Answer

App Engine Flexible Environment

Question 8

A company wants to assign metadata to resources for cost allocation reporting. They need to categorize resources by environment (production, staging, development) and team (engineering, marketing). They also need to use this metadata in billing exports. Which approach should they take?

Accepted Answer

Use labels.. Labels in Google Cloud are key-value pairs that can be attached to resources and are propagated to billing exports, making them ideal for cost allocation by environment and team. They are designed for organizational metadata and can be used in billing reports to break down costs. Labels are the recommended approach for this use case.

Answer

Use folder names.

Answer

Use network tags.

Answer

Use organization policy tags.

Question 9

A startup needs to migrate an on-premises web application to the cloud with minimal operational overhead. The application runs on a custom runtime that is difficult to containerize. The team wants to focus only on code, not infrastructure management. Which Google Cloud service is MOST appropriate?

Accepted Answer

App Engine. App Engine is a fully managed platform-as-a-service that lets teams deploy code without managing servers, and it supports custom runtimes via flexible environment. For a startup wanting minimal operational overhead and a custom runtime that is hard to containerize, App Engine's flexible environment is the most appropriate fit. It handles scaling, patching, and infrastructure while letting the team focus on code.

Answer

Compute Engine

Answer

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)

Answer

Cloud Run

Question 10

A company runs a video processing application that triggers a function each time a new video is uploaded to Cloud Storage. The function transcodes the video and stores the result. Which compute service is BEST suited for this event-driven workload?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Functions. Cloud Functions is Google Cloud's event-driven FaaS product, natively integrated with Cloud Storage object-finalize events via Eventarc, making it the canonical choice for 'run code when a file lands in a bucket.' It handles the trigger wiring, retries, and scaling automatically, so the developer only writes the transcoding logic. Cloud Run can also be event-driven via Eventarc, but Cloud Functions is the purpose-built, lowest-friction option for this pattern.

Answer

Compute Engine

Answer

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)

Answer

Cloud Run

Question 11

A data analytics team needs to process streaming data from thousands of IoT devices in real time. They want to ingest the data, process it (e.g., windowed aggregations), and then load it into BigQuery for analysis. Which Google Cloud service should they use for the stream processing step?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Dataflow. Cloud Dataflow is Google Cloud's fully managed, serverless service for both batch and stream processing, built on Apache Beam. It natively supports windowed aggregations, exactly-once processing, and autoscaling, making it ideal for real-time IoT data pipelines. Dataflow can read from Pub/Sub, apply transformations (e.g., fixed/sliding windows), and write to BigQuery with built-in connectors. Unlike Dataproc, it abstracts away cluster management, so the team can focus on pipeline logic rather than infrastructure.

Answer

BigQuery

Answer

Cloud Pub/Sub

Answer

Cloud Dataproc

Question 12

A retail company uses Google Cloud to run an online store. They have a security requirement that all API calls to Cloud Storage must come from the company's on-premises network only. Which Google Cloud security feature should they implement?

Accepted Answer

VPC Service Controls. VPC Service Controls allow you to define perimeters that restrict access to Google Cloud services from specified VPC networks or IP ranges. Cloud Armor is for DDoS and WAF. IAM conditions are for attribute-based access control within a policy. Identity-Aware Proxy protects web applications, not storage APIs.

Answer

IAM conditions with source IP constraint

Answer

Cloud Armor

Answer

Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP)

Question 13

A company wants to receive notifications when its monthly spending exceeds 80% of a $10,000 budget. Which set of steps will achieve this?

Accepted Answer

Set up a budget in the Billing section of Cloud Console, define the amount, and add alert thresholds at 80%. To receive notifications when spending exceeds 80% of a $10,000 budget, the correct approach is to create a budget in the Billing section of Google Cloud Console, define the amount, and set alert thresholds at 80%. This directly triggers alerts based on actual or forecasted spend. Other options do not provide budget-based alerts.

Answer

Create a budget alert in Cloud Monitoring with a metric threshold of 80%

Answer

Use the Google Cloud Pricing Calculator to set a spending limit

Answer

Configure a Cloud Scheduler job to check billing data in BigQuery and send a notification

Question 14

A data scientist wants to train a custom machine learning model using their own data and deploy it for online predictions. They want a unified platform that manages the entire ML lifecycle from data preparation to model serving. Which service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Vertex AI. Vertex AI is Google Cloud's unified machine learning platform that manages the entire ML lifecycle, including data preparation, training (custom or AutoML), model management, and deployment for online predictions. It provides a single environment for data scientists to build, deploy, and scale ML models. Unlike other options, Vertex AI integrates all necessary components such as Vertex AI Workbench, Training, Predictions, and Pipelines, making it the correct choice for end-to-end ML workflows.

Answer

Cloud Functions

Answer

AutoML

Answer

AI Platform (Unified)

Question 15

A company wants to replace its VPN-based remote access with a solution that grants access to internal web applications based on user identity and device context, without requiring a VPN. Which Google Cloud service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP). Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP) is the Google Cloud service that provides identity and context-aware access to internal web applications without a VPN. It verifies user identity and device context before granting access, making it the correct choice. Other options do not provide this functionality.

Answer

Access Transparency

Answer

Cloud Identity

Answer

Cloud VPN