Cloud Digital Leader Why Cloud Technology Can Transform Business Practice Test 2 — 15 Questions

Question 1

An organization wants to use machine learning to analyze customer feedback but has no ML expertise. They need a service that can train custom models with minimal coding. Which Google Cloud service should they use?

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

Accepted Answer

AutoML Natural Language. AutoML Natural Language is a Google Cloud service that allows users with limited ML expertise to train custom machine learning models for text classification, sentiment analysis, and entity extraction with minimal coding. It provides a user-friendly interface and requires only labeled data, automating the model selection and training process. This directly addresses the organization's need to analyze customer feedback without ML expertise. Other options either require more expertise (Vertex AI) or are pre-trained APIs not customizable for specific needs (Cloud Vision API, Cloud Natural Language API).

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Cloud Vision API

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Vertex AI

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Cloud Natural Language API

Question 2

A healthcare startup is building a HIPAA-compliant application on Google Cloud. They need to encrypt data at rest and manage their own encryption keys. Which service should they use for key management?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Key Management Service (Cloud KMS). Cloud KMS is the correct service because it is Google Cloud's dedicated key management service that allows customers to create, manage, and use encryption keys for data at rest. It supports customer-managed encryption keys (CMEK) and integrates with many GCP services, enabling HIPAA-compliant encryption where the customer controls the keys. Cloud HSM is a hardware security module option within Cloud KMS, but the core key management service is Cloud KMS.

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Cloud IAM

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Cloud Data Loss Prevention (DLP)

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Cloud HSM

Question 3

A company runs a batch processing workload every night that takes 60 minutes on a single n1-standard-32 VM. They want to reduce costs by using preemptible VMs but need the job to complete within 90 minutes. The job can be parallelized if necessary. Which approach is most cost-effective?

Accepted Answer

Split the workload across 4 preemptible n1-standard-8 VMs with checkpointing.. Preemptible VMs can be terminated at any time, so running multiple smaller instances with checkpointing and retries reduces cost and meets the deadline.

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Use a single non-preemptible VM to ensure completion.

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Use the same VM but as preemptible; if preempted, restart the job from scratch.

Answer

Use a single preemptible VM with persistent disk snapshots every 10 minutes.

Question 4

A data analytics firm wants to query data across Cloud Storage and BigQuery without moving the data. They need a single SQL interface. Which Google Cloud service enables this?

Accepted Answer

BigQuery external tables (federated queries). BigQuery external tables (federated queries) allow SQL queries directly against data stored in Cloud Storage (CSV, JSON, Parquet, Avro, ORC) without loading it into BigQuery. This provides a single SQL interface across both native BigQuery tables and external data sources, satisfying the requirement to query without moving data.

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Dataproc with Spark SQL

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Cloud SQL federated queries

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BigQuery Omni

Question 5

A company wants to reduce its carbon footprint by using cloud infrastructure powered by renewable energy. Which Google Cloud sustainability commitment is most relevant?

Accepted Answer

100% renewable energy match. Google Cloud matches 100% of its global electricity consumption with renewable energy purchases.

Answer

Net zero emissions by 2025

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Carbon offset program

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Carbon-free energy by 2025

Question 6

A company is evaluating total cost of ownership (TCO) for migrating a legacy application to Google Cloud. Which cost should they include in the cloud TCO calculation that is often overlooked?

Accepted Answer

Data egress fees. Data egress fees — the cost of moving data out of Google Cloud — are frequently overlooked in TCO calculations because teams focus on compute and storage pricing. For legacy applications that regularly transfer data to on-premises systems or other clouds, egress charges can accumulate significantly and materially affect the total cost of ownership.

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Software licensing for operating systems

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Cost of physical security for data centers

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Cost of electricity for servers

Question 7

A financial company wants to run sensitive workloads on Google Cloud while ensuring data never leaves a specific geographic boundary and meets strict compliance requirements. Which THREE Google Cloud services should they combine?

Accepted Answer

Assured Workloads for Government. Assured Workloads for Government (B) is correct because it enforces regulatory and data-residency controls on a folder, restricting where resources and data can be created and applying compliance frameworks such as FedRAMP, ITAR, and data-boundary policies. Cloud HSM with CMEK (D) is correct because Cloud HSM provides FIPS 140-2 Level 3 validated hardware key management, and CMEK lets the company retain control of the encryption keys used for its data at rest, satisfying strict key-custody and compliance requirements. VPC Service Controls (E) is correct because it creates a service perimeter around the project that prevents data exfiltration from managed services like Cloud Storage and BigQuery, which directly supports keeping sensitive data inside a defined geographic and organizational boundary. Cloud VPN (A) is not correct because it only provides encrypted connectivity between on-premises networks and Google Cloud, not data-residency or compliance enforcement. Cloud NAT (C) is not correct because it merely allows outbound internet access for private instances and has no role in data residency or regulatory compliance.

Answer

Cloud VPN

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Cloud NAT

Question 8

A retail company runs a web application on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE). They want to automatically scale the application based on custom metrics (e.g., number of items in a shopping cart). Which TWO resources should they configure?

Accepted Answer

Custom Metrics Stackdriver Adapter. Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA) can scale pods based on custom metrics. Custom Metrics adapter (e.g., Stackdriver adapter) exposes application metrics to HPA.

Answer

Cluster Autoscaler

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Vertical Pod Autoscaler (VPA)

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Cloud Load Balancing

Question 9

A startup wants to launch a new application quickly and only pay for the compute resources they use, avoiding upfront hardware purchases. Which cloud benefit best supports this goal?

Accepted Answer

Cost optimisation (pay-as-you-go). Pay-as-you-go pricing allows customers to pay only for what they use, avoiding large capital expenditures (CAPEX) on hardware. Agility is about speed, scalability is about handling load, and global reach is about geographic coverage.

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Scalability

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Agility

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Global reach

Question 10

A company runs a batch job that processes data every night. The job can tolerate interruptions and currently runs on a dedicated on-premises server that is underutilized. They want to migrate to Google Cloud and minimise compute cost. Which compute option is most cost-effective?

Accepted Answer

Preemptible VMs. Preemptible VMs offer significantly lower cost (up to 80% discount) but can be terminated at any time, making them ideal for fault-tolerant batch workloads. Standard VMs are more expensive, sole-tenant nodes are for isolation, and GPUs add cost.

Answer

Sole-tenant nodes

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Standard (on-demand) VMs

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VMs with GPUs

Question 11

A retail company experiences sudden traffic spikes during flash sales. Their on-premises infrastructure often runs out of capacity, causing downtime. They are migrating to Google Cloud and need to automatically handle traffic spikes without manual intervention. Which approach should they take?

Accepted Answer

Create a managed instance group with autoscaling. A managed instance group (MIG) with autoscaling automatically adjusts the number of VM instances based on load, which directly addresses traffic spikes without manual intervention. This is the standard Google Cloud solution for horizontal scaling of compute resources.

Answer

Manually add VMs when traffic increases

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Use a GPU-accelerated VM for compute

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Use a single large VM and rely on Cloud Load Balancing

Question 12

A company wants to reduce its carbon footprint and has committed to using 100% renewable energy for its cloud infrastructure. Which Google Cloud value proposition directly supports this goal?

Accepted Answer

Sustainability (renewable energy match). Google Cloud matches 100% of its global energy consumption with renewable energy and aims for carbon-free energy by 2030. Security, open source, and compliance are unrelated to renewable energy.

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Open cloud (Kubernetes/TensorFlow)

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Security (BeyondCorp/encryption)

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Trust and compliance (certifications)

Question 13

A financial services firm must keep sensitive data on-premises due to regulatory requirements but wants to use Google Cloud's AI/ML services for analytics on that data. Which deployment model should they adopt?

Accepted Answer

Hybrid cloud (on-premises + Google Cloud). Hybrid cloud connects on-premises infrastructure to Google Cloud, allowing data to remain on-prem while leveraging cloud AI/ML services via secure connections. Public cloud would move data off-prem, private cloud is on-prem only, multi-cloud is about multiple public clouds.

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Private cloud (on-premises only)

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Multi-cloud (AWS + Azure + Google Cloud)

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Public cloud (Google Cloud only)

Question 14

A company currently runs its applications in a co-location data centre with a 5-year contract for hardware. They are considering migrating to Google Cloud to avoid the upcoming hardware refresh cycle. Which business driver is most directly addressed by this migration?

Accepted Answer

Cost optimisation (avoiding CAPEX). The company faces an upcoming hardware refresh cycle mandated by their 5-year co-location contract, which would require significant capital expenditure (CAPEX) on new servers, storage, and networking. Migrating to Google Cloud converts that CAPEX into operational expenditure (OPEX) on a pay-as-you-go basis, directly addressing the cost optimization driver of avoiding a large upfront hardware investment.

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Scalability

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Agility

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Innovation (AI/ML access)

Question 15

A company uses a legacy on-premises database and wants to migrate to Google Cloud with minimal changes to application code. They need a fully managed relational database that supports MySQL compatibility and automatic failover. Which service should they choose?

Accepted Answer

Cloud SQL for MySQL. Cloud SQL for MySQL is a fully managed relational database service that is wire-compatible with MySQL, so existing applications using MySQL drivers and SQL syntax require minimal code changes. It supports automatic failover via a regional HA configuration with a standby instance. This matches the requirement for MySQL compatibility, managed operations, and automatic failover.

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Firestore

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Cloud Spanner

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Cloud Bigtable