Cloud Digital Leader Fundamental Cloud Concepts Practice Test 3 — 15 Questions

Question 1

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 PaaS offering that fully manages the runtime environment, allowing developers to deploy code without managing servers or containers. Cloud Run requires containerization, Compute Engine is IaaS (more overhead), and GKE requires managing Kubernetes clusters.

Answer

Compute Engine

Answer

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)

Answer

Cloud Run

Question 2

Which characteristic of cloud computing allows a user to provision virtual machines without needing to interact with Google Cloud support or create a ticket?

Accepted Answer

On-demand self-service. On-demand self-service means users can provision resources automatically without human interaction. The other options are also NIST characteristics but do not specifically address provisioning without manual intervention.

Answer

Broad network access

Answer

Measured service

Answer

Resource pooling

Question 3

An organization needs to store confidential healthcare data in Google Cloud. Which compliance certification ensures that Google Cloud infrastructure meets the required security controls for protected health information (PHI)?

Accepted Answer

HIPAA. HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act) sets standards for protecting PHI. Customers must sign a Business Associate Agreement (BAA) with Google to use GCP for HIPAA-covered data. The other certifications address different data types.

Answer

ISO 27001

Answer

SOC 2

Answer

PCI DSS

Question 4

A media company runs a video transcoding pipeline on Compute Engine instances that process a large batch of jobs every night. The workload is predictable and takes about 6 hours. After transcoding, the instances are idle until the next batch. How can the company optimize costs without sacrificing the ability to complete the batch within 6 hours?

Accepted Answer

Use preemptible VMs with checkpointing and automatic restarts. Preemptible VMs are up to 80% cheaper but can be terminated at any time. However, the workload is fault-tolerant (can be restarted) and the batch can likely complete within 6 hours if the job is designed to handle interruptions. Standard VMs are more expensive, committed use discounts require 1- or 3-year commitments, and sole-tenant nodes are for isolation, not cost savings.

Answer

Purchase committed use discounts for 1 year

Answer

Use sole-tenant nodes

Answer

Use standard VMs and turn them off manually after the batch

Question 5

A global e-commerce company wants to serve its website from Google Cloud with low latency to users worldwide. The website consists of static content (images, CSS) and dynamic content served by a backend application. Which combination of services should they use?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Storage with Cloud CDN for static content, and Compute Engine instances behind Cloud Load Balancing for dynamic content. Cloud CDN caches static content at edge locations (PoPs) for low-latency delivery. Cloud Load Balancing distributes traffic across backend instances in multiple regions, and the backend can be deployed on Compute Engine or GKE. Cloud Storage alone cannot serve dynamic content; Cloud Functions is serverless but not ideal for full web serving; Cloud Armor is a security service.

Answer

Compute Engine with Cloud Armor

Answer

Cloud Functions for all content

Answer

Cloud Storage only

Question 6

A developer needs to deploy a containerized microservice that scales to zero when not in use and automatically scales up on incoming traffic. The microservice uses a custom container image that listens on port 8080. Which Google Cloud compute service is BEST suited for this requirement?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Run. Cloud Run is a managed compute platform that runs stateless containers, automatically scales (including to zero), and charges only for resources used during request processing. It fits the requirement perfectly. GKE requires managing a cluster and doesn't scale to zero by default; App Engine standard environment has a sandbox that may not support custom containers; Cloud Functions is limited to specific runtimes.

Answer

Cloud Functions

Answer

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) with Horizontal Pod Autoscaler

Answer

App Engine standard environment

Question 7

A financial services company is required to keep all data within a specific geographic region for regulatory compliance. They plan to deploy a globally distributed application using Cloud Spanner. How should they configure Cloud Spanner to meet this compliance requirement?

Accepted Answer

Use a single-region configuration in the required region. Cloud Spanner allows you to choose specific regions for your instance, and replicas are placed only within that region. Multi-region configurations span multiple geographic areas and would violate the data residency requirement. Therefore, a single-region configuration is required.

Answer

Use a multi-region configuration with a write region in the required region

Answer

Use a multi-region configuration but restrict access to only one region

Answer

Use a dual-region configuration

Question 8

An organization wants to use Google Cloud to analyze large-scale genomic data. The data is stored in Cloud Storage in a compressed format. They need to run a custom Python pipeline that preprocesses the data and then uses a GPU-intensive algorithm for alignment. The preprocessing is CPU-bound and takes 30 minutes per sample, while the alignment takes 1 hour per sample on a GPU. They have thousands of samples. Which compute approach is MOST cost-effective?

Accepted Answer

Use preemptible VMs with CPU for preprocessing and preemptible VMs with GPU for alignment, with checkpointing. Using preemptible VMs for both steps can significantly reduce costs, especially for large batches. However, GPU preemptible pricing is also lower. The workload is batch and fault-tolerant if checkpointing is implemented. Committed use discounts require 1-year commitment; sole-tenant nodes are for isolation; independent scaling of CPU and GPU is not directly available without separate instance groups.

Answer

Use committed use discounts for 1 year on GPU instances

Answer

Use regular VMs with both CPU and GPU on the same instance

Answer

Use sole-tenant nodes for data isolation

Question 9

A company is migrating a legacy monolithic application to Google Cloud. The application currently runs on a single physical server with a custom Linux distribution. The team wants to minimize changes to the application while gaining the benefits of cloud infrastructure. Which migration strategy should they use?

Accepted Answer

Rehost the application on Compute Engine using a custom image of the current OS. Lift and shift (rehosting) moves the application as-is to the cloud, often by creating a custom image to run on Compute Engine. This minimizes changes. Refactoring (rearchitecting) involves code changes; re-platforming modifies the OS/platform; rebuilding is a full rewrite.

Answer

Rebuild the application from scratch on Cloud Run

Answer

Re-platform the application to a supported OS version

Answer

Refactor the application into microservices and deploy on GKE

Question 10

A data engineer needs to run a one-time complex data transformation job on a large dataset (10 TB) stored in Cloud Storage. The job will take approximately 8 hours and is not fault-tolerant. The engineer wants the cheapest possible compute option that can reliably complete the job. What should they use?

Accepted Answer

Standard VMs (on-demand) and delete them after the job. Preemptible VMs can be terminated at any time, so they are not reliable for a non-fault-tolerant job. Standard VMs are reliable and can be stopped after the job to save costs. Committed use discounts require long-term commitment. Dataflow is a fully managed service but may have a minimum cost; however, the question asks for the cheapest compute option, and standard VMs (with proper sizing) can be cheaper than Dataflow for a one-time job.

Answer

Preemptible VMs

Answer

Committed use discount VMs for 1 year

Answer

Dataflow with preemptible workers

Question 11

A company has deployed a web application on Compute Engine instances behind a regional Internal HTTPS Load Balancer. The application servers need to perform TLS termination and serve traffic only from within the VPC. The security team insists that no traffic should traverse the public internet. Which type of load balancer should be used to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Internal HTTPS Load Balancer. An internal HTTPS Load Balancer is regional and only accessible from within the VPC, providing internal TLS termination without internet exposure. The external HTTPS Load Balancer is internet-facing. The internal TCP/UDP Load Balancer does not support HTTPS termination. The external SSL Proxy Load Balancer is for non-HTTPS traffic and is internet-facing.

Answer

External SSL Proxy Load Balancer

Answer

External HTTPS Load Balancer

Answer

Internal TCP/UDP Load Balancer

Question 12

A DevOps engineer uses Terraform to manage Google Cloud resources. They want to ensure that a specific Cloud Storage bucket is deleted before the Terraform destroys other dependent resources. The bucket holds the Terraform state file. What is the correct approach to handle this dependency in Terraform?

Accepted Answer

Use `depends_on` in all other resources to depend on the state bucket. Terraform does not guarantee the order of destruction based on implicit dependencies alone. To ensure a specific destroy order, the engineer should use `depends_on` to explicitly declare that the state bucket must be destroyed last (i.e., other resources depend on it). Alternatively, they can move the state file to a different location before destroying. However, the question asks for the correct approach within Terraform configuration.

Answer

Use `depends_on` in the state bucket resource to depend on all other resources

Answer

Use `lifecycle` block with `create_before_destroy = true`

Answer

Use `terraform state rm` to remove the bucket from state before destroying

Question 13

A company wants to deploy a multi-tier web application on Google Cloud that requires high availability across zones. The application consists of a stateless web frontend and a stateful database backend. Which TWO actions should the company take to meet the high availability requirement? (Select two.)

Accepted Answer

Use a regional managed instance group for the web frontend. To achieve high availability across zones, the frontend should be deployed in multiple zones behind a load balancer, and the database should be configured with replication across zones. Using a single large instance for the database creates a single point of failure. Regional managed instance groups distribute instances across zones.

Answer

Place all resources in the same zone to simplify management

Answer

Configure the database as a single large instance with automatic backups

Answer

Deploy the web frontend in a single zone to reduce network latency

Question 14

An organization needs to collect and analyze real-time clickstream data from millions of users. The data is ingested via HTTP POST requests. The solution must be serverless, scale automatically, and allow for real-time analytics with sub-second latency. Which THREE Google Cloud services should be combined to achieve this? (Select three.)

Accepted Answer

Cloud Load Balancing. Cloud Load Balancing distributes incoming HTTP requests across Cloud Run instances, which process the data and publish to Pub/Sub. Dataflow can read from Pub/Sub for real-time streaming analytics. Cloud Storage is not suitable for real-time analytics. BigQuery is for near-real-time but not sub-second; Dataflow provides sub-second latency for streaming.

Answer

BigQuery

Answer

Cloud Storage

Question 15

A company runs a critical application on Compute Engine that must always be available, even if an entire zone fails. The application stores state in a Cloud Spanner instance. The operations team wants to test disaster recovery procedures without affecting production. Which TWO actions should they take? (Select two.)

Accepted Answer

Create a Cloud Spanner clone from the production instance for testing. To test DR without impacting production, you can create a clone of the production Spanner instance (which creates a point-in-time copy) and perform testing on the clone. Alternatively, you can set up a separate test environment with its own Spanner instance. Restoring a backup to a new instance is also valid. However, the question asks for TWO actions. Modifying production IAM roles could affect access; failing over a regional Spanner instance would cause downtime.

Answer

Use the same Spanner instance but with a different database

Answer

Perform a manual failover of the production Spanner instance to another region

Answer

Modify IAM roles to grant testers read-only access to production