Cloud Digital Leader Scaling with Google Cloud operations — 10 Questions

Question 1

A company's on-premises IT team spends 70% of their time on routine maintenance tasks: patching servers, replacing failed hardware, and upgrading storage. After migrating to Google Cloud managed services, which operational outcome should they expect?

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

Accepted Answer

The IT team can redirect time from maintenance to higher-value activities like innovation and feature development.. By migrating to fully managed Google Cloud services such as Cloud SQL, Google Kubernetes Engine, or Cloud Run, the cloud provider handles routine maintenance tasks like patching, hardware replacement, and storage upgrades. While IaaS like Compute Engine shifts hardware maintenance, OS patching remains the customer's responsibility. The key outcome is that teams can redirect time away from undifferentiated maintenance to higher-value activities. Option B correctly identifies this shift.

Answer

The IT team will need to hire more staff to manage additional cloud infrastructure.

Answer

The IT team will still perform the same tasks but remotely via the Cloud Console.

Answer

The IT team will be fully automated out of their roles by Google's AI.

Question 2

A company currently spends $200,000 annually on data center costs (hardware, power, cooling, staff). After migrating to Google Cloud, their cloud bill is $120,000 annually, but they also save $50,000 in data center costs they no longer pay. What is their net annual savings from the migration?

Accepted Answer

$80,000 annual savings ($200,000 previous cost minus $120,000 cloud cost). The net annual savings are simply the difference between the previous total cost of $200,000 and the new cloud cost of $120,000, resulting in $80,000 savings. The $50,000 data center cost savings are already reflected in the reduction from $200,000 to $120,000, as the company no longer pays those costs. No other costs remain after migration.

Answer

$30,000 (cloud cost increase of $120K minus the $50K DC savings)

Answer

$50,000 (only the data center cost savings count)

Answer

$120,000 (the entire cloud bill is savings)

Question 3

A company running critical applications on Google Cloud wants access to technical support with a response time under 1 hour for critical issues and a dedicated Technical Account Manager (TAM). Which Google Cloud support tier should they purchase?

Accepted Answer

Premium support. Premium support is the only Google Cloud tier that includes a dedicated Technical Account Manager (TAM) and meets the sub-hour response time for critical (P1) issues. Basic, Standard, and Enhanced do not include a TAM, and while Enhanced offers faster response than Standard, it still lacks the TAM. Therefore, Premium is the correct choice.

Answer

Basic support

Answer

Standard support

Answer

Enhanced support

Question 4

A company wants to optimize their Google Cloud spending. They have baseline compute workloads that run continuously 24/7 for at least one year. Which pricing option provides the greatest savings for these stable, long-running workloads?

Accepted Answer

Committed Use Discounts (CUDs) — 1-year or 3-year commitment for up to 55% savings.. Committed Use Discounts (CUDs) are ideal for stable, long-running workloads because they offer significant savings in exchange for a predictable resource usage commitment. For Compute Engine, 1-year commitments typically save about 37% and 3-year commitments save up to 55% (for resource-based CUDs). Since the workloads run continuously 24/7 for at least one year, a CUD directly matches this usage pattern and provides the greatest savings among the listed options for such non-preemptible, always-on VMs. Spot VMs offer higher raw discounts but are preemptible and unsuitable for uninterrupted 24/7 workloads.

Answer

Spot VMs — up to 91% savings over on-demand pricing.

Answer

On-demand pricing — pay per minute with no commitment.

Answer

Sustained Use Discounts — automatically applied to all running VMs.

Question 5

A company's cloud team is asked to reduce the cost of a batch data processing workload that runs for 4–6 hours each night and can tolerate interruptions. The workload currently uses standard on-demand Compute Engine VMs. Which pricing option should the team evaluate first?

Accepted Answer

Spot VMs, which offer up to 91% discount for workloads that can tolerate interruption and checkpoint/resume their work. Spot VMs are the correct first evaluation because the workload runs for a fixed 4–6 hour nightly window, can tolerate interruptions, and can checkpoint/resume its work. Spot VMs offer up to a 91% discount compared to standard on-demand VMs, making them the most cost-effective option for fault-tolerant batch processing that does not require continuous availability.

Answer

Committed Use Discounts (CUDs), by committing to 1 or 3 years of VM usage

Answer

Sustained Use Discounts (SUDs), which automatically apply when VMs run for more than 25% of a month

Answer

Capacity reservations, which guarantee capacity but do not provide a discounted pricing option for the nightly batch window

Question 6

A DevOps team wants to adopt GitOps practices for managing their Google Cloud infrastructure. Which combination of tools and practices defines a GitOps approach to cloud infrastructure management?

Accepted Answer

Storing all infrastructure as code (Terraform or Config Connector) in a Git repository, using pull requests for all changes, and automated CI/CD pipelines that apply changes and detect drift from the declared state. GitOps is defined by using a Git repository as the single source of truth for declarative infrastructure, with pull requests driving changes and automated CI/CD pipelines reconciling the actual state with the declared state. This approach enforces version control, auditability, and drift detection, which are core to managing Google Cloud infrastructure at scale with tools like Terraform or Config Connector.

Answer

Manually applying Terraform changes from engineers' local machines and documenting changes in a shared wiki

Answer

Using the Google Cloud Console to make infrastructure changes and exporting the configuration to Git after each change

Answer

GitOps only applies to application code deployment, not to cloud infrastructure management

Question 7

A cloud team wants to automatically enforce that all new Compute Engine VMs are created with a specific label (environment: production) and that no VMs are created with external IP addresses in the production project. Which Google Cloud capability enforces these organizational policies at resource creation time?

Accepted Answer

Organization Policy Service constraints that enforce no external IPs and required labels at resource creation time, blocking non-compliant VMs before they are created. Organization Policy Service constraints, specifically `compute.vmExternalIpAccess` for blocking external IPs and custom constraints for required labels, are evaluated at resource creation time. They block non-compliant VM creation before the API call succeeds, enforcing policies like 'no external IPs' and 'required labels' without relying on post-creation detection or IAM permissions.

Answer

Cloud Monitoring alerting policies that detect and notify when non-compliant VMs are created

Answer

Cloud IAM roles that prevent developers from creating VMs without the proper labels

Answer

Cloud Billing budget alerts that detect when VM spending exceeds expected amounts for labeled resources

Question 8

A team wants to set up alerts for when the error budget of their service is nearly exhausted. The service has an SLO of 99.9% availability over a 30-day rolling window. Which condition should they use in Cloud Monitoring alerting?

Accepted Answer

error budget remaining < 10%. The error budget is the amount of allowable downtime over the 30-day window (0.1% of total time). Setting an alert when the remaining budget drops below 10% gives the team early warning before the budget is fully exhausted, allowing proactive remediation. Cloud Monitoring alerting policies can use the `error_budget_remaining` metric to trigger on a threshold like < 10%. Note: In SRE practice, 'exhausted' is often used loosely to mean 'nearly exhausted' for alerting purposes; an alert at exactly 0% would be reactive and less valuable.

Answer

burn rate > 1 over 1 hour

Answer

latency > 100ms

Answer

SLI < 99.9%

Question 9

A site reliability engineer is implementing SRE practices in Google Cloud. Which TWO of the following are key principles of SRE? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Using error budgets to balance reliability and feature velocity. Error budgets are a core SRE principle that define the acceptable level of failure (e.g., 99.9% uptime allows 0.1% errors). This budget is used to balance the tension between releasing new features (velocity) and maintaining system reliability, allowing teams to halt deployments when the budget is exhausted. Automation is another key SRE principle that focuses on eliminating toil and reducing manual, repetitive work by automating operational tasks, which improves reliability and frees teams to focus on high-value activities. Together, error budgets and automation help organizations implement SRE practices effectively.

Answer

Measuring everything with SLIs, SLOs, and SLAs

Answer

Centralizing all operations in a single team

Answer

Deploying changes only during maintenance windows

Question 10

Refer to the exhibit. A DevOps engineer notices that the alert fires even when there is only a single 5-second spike of errors that lasts for one minute. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The trigger count is set to 1, so a single minute of high rate fires the alert. The trigger count is 1, meaning the alert fires after just one alignment period (1 minute) with a rate above threshold. A single 5-second spike can cause a high rate during that minute, triggering the alert. Option B is incorrect because the alignment period of 60s is actually appropriate; the issue is the trigger count being too low. Option C is incorrect because while a low threshold could cause false positives, the question specifically points to a single spike causing the alert, which is due to the trigger count. Option D is incorrect because the trigger count is 1, not 2.

Answer

The alignment period is too short (60s)

Answer

The threshold value (5) is too low

Answer

The trigger count is set to 2, so two consecutive periods are needed