Google PCA Practice Test 25 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company wants to analyze their Google Cloud spending and receive recommendations for rightsizing resources. Which tool provides this functionality?

Accepted Answer

Active Assist. Active Assist includes recommendations for rightsizing Compute Engine VMs, Cloud SQL instances, and more. BigQuery Reservations is for slot management. Cloud Billing reports show costs but not recommendations. Pricing Calculator estimates costs.

Answer

BigQuery Reservations

Answer

Google Cloud Pricing Calculator

Answer

Cloud Billing reports

Question 2

A team is designing a disaster recovery plan for a critical application. They need to ensure RPO of less than 1 hour and RTO of less than 4 hours. The application runs on Compute Engine with persistent disks and uses Cloud SQL for MySQL. Which THREE actions should they take? (Choose 3.)

Accepted Answer

Store application configuration and scripts in a multi-regional Cloud Storage bucket. For Compute Engine, taking regular snapshots and creating instances from them in another region meets RPO/RTO. For Cloud SQL, enabling cross-region replication (asynchronous) provides failover capability. Using a single regional managed instance group does not provide DR across regions. Transfer Appliance is for bulk data migration, not DR. A multi-region bucket is for storage but not directly for Compute Engine instances.

Answer

Deploy a Transfer Appliance to copy data to another region weekly

Answer

Use a regional managed instance group and rely on Google's automatic failover

Question 3

An application uses Cloud Bigtable and experiences high latency for reads. The row key is a timestamp prefix followed by a random ID. Queries often scan a range of timestamps for a specific ID. What design change would MOST improve read performance?

Accepted Answer

Change the row key to start with the random ID followed by timestamp. For Bigtable, row key design is critical. Scanning a range of timestamps for a specific ID is inefficient if the key starts with timestamp (scans across all IDs). Prepending the ID ensures all data for that ID is contiguous, making range scans efficient. Adding nodes increases throughput but doesn't fix the key design issue. Using a column family is about grouping columns, not performance.

Answer

Add more Bigtable nodes

Answer

Use a separate column family for the ID

Answer

Enable Bigtable replication

Question 4

A data analytics team runs ad-hoc SQL queries on BigQuery to explore a 10 TB table. Queries are slow and expensive because they frequently scan the entire table. They want to reduce query costs and improve performance without changing the table schema. Which optimization should they apply first?

Accepted Answer

Partition the table by a date or timestamp column.. Partitioning the table by a time column (e.g., ingestion date) allows queries to filter on that column and scan only relevant partitions, reducing scanned data and cost. Clustering is also beneficial but partitioning is the first step for cost reduction.

Answer

Create a materialized view of common aggregations.

Answer

Use clustering on the most-filtered column.

Answer

Switch to on-demand pricing from slot reservations.

Question 5

A company runs a web application behind a Cloud HTTP(S) Load Balancer. Static content (images, CSS, JS) is served from Cloud Storage. They want to reduce latency for users worldwide. Which action is MOST effective?

Accepted Answer

Enable Cloud CDN on the backend bucket. Cloud CDN caches content at global edge locations, reducing latency for users. Enabling Cloud CDN on the backend bucket serves static content from the edge. Using a multi-region bucket provides regional redundancy but does not reduce latency as effectively as CDN. Increasing machine size does not help with static content serving.

Answer

Increase the number of frontend instances

Answer

Use Cloud Armor to block high-latency requests

Answer

Use a multi-regional Cloud Storage bucket

Question 6

A startup is migrating its on-premises MySQL database (5 TB) to Cloud SQL. The database is mission-critical and downtime must be minimized. Which migration service should they use to reduce downtime?

Accepted Answer

Database Migration Service (DMS). Database Migration Service (DMS) supports continuous replication from on-premises MySQL to Cloud SQL, minimizing downtime. Other options like Transfer Appliance or Storage Transfer Service are for file transfers, not live databases.

Answer

Transfer Appliance

Answer

gcloud sql import command

Answer

Storage Transfer Service

Question 7

A company wants to analyze the total cost of ownership (TCO) for migrating their on-premises data center to Google Cloud. They need to compare compute, storage, and network costs, including operational expenses like maintenance and power. Which tool should they use?

Accepted Answer

Google Cloud TCO Calculator. Google Cloud's TCO calculator allows you to input on-premises infrastructure details and estimate cloud costs, including compute, storage, network, and operational savings. The Pricing Calculator is for estimating cloud costs but does not compare on-prem vs cloud. Active Assist is for optimization recommendations, not TCO analysis.

Answer

Google Cloud Pricing Calculator

Answer

Cloud Billing reports

Answer

Active Assist cost optimization recommendations

Question 8

A company wants to define an SLO for their application's availability. They measure that the application was down for 30 minutes in a 30-day period. What is the availability SLO that they can achieve?

Accepted Answer

99.9%. Availability = (total time - downtime) / total time. 30 days = 43200 minutes. (43200 - 30) / 43200 = 99.93%. The closest higher but achievable SLO would be 99.9%, because 99.95% would allow only 21.6 minutes downtime. Typically SLOs are stated as 99.9%, 99.95%, etc.

Answer

99.5%

Answer

99.99%

Answer

99.95%

Question 9

A company runs a critical application on Compute Engine with a 1-year commitment for cost savings. They want to also optimize for performance by using machine types with more memory. They plan to update to a different machine series during the commitment term. Which committed use discount type allows this flexibility?

Accepted Answer

Spend-based committed use discount. Spend-based committed use discounts apply to a dollar amount of spend on eligible instance types, allowing flexibility to change machine types as long as the spend commitment is met. Resource-based committed use discounts are tied to specific machine types (e.g., n1-standard-4) and cannot be changed without breaking the commitment.

Answer

Preemptible discount

Answer

Sustained use discount

Answer

Resource-based committed use discount

Question 10

An organization deploys a web application on Compute Engine behind a global HTTPS load balancer. They want to reduce latency for users worldwide and minimize load on backend instances. Which GCP service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Cloud CDN. Cloud CDN uses Google's global edge caches to serve content closer to users, reducing latency and backend load. Cloud Armor provides security, Cloud NAT is for outbound connectivity, and VPC peering is for network connectivity, not caching.

Answer

Cloud Armor

Answer

Cloud NAT

Answer

VPC Network Peering

Question 11

A company is migrating a large Oracle database (5 TB) from on-premises to Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL. They require minimal downtime and automated schema conversion. Which Google Cloud service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Database Migration Service (DMS). Database Migration Service (DMS) supports homogeneous and heterogeneous migrations with minimal downtime and includes schema conversion for Oracle to PostgreSQL via the Database Migration Service with converters. Velostrata is for VM migration, Transfer Appliance for bulk data, and Storage Transfer Service for cloud-to-cloud data.

Answer

Velostrata (Migrate for Compute Engine)

Answer

Transfer Appliance

Answer

Storage Transfer Service

Question 12

A company has a production database running on Cloud SQL. They need to ensure high availability with automatic failover in the event of a zone outage. What should they do?

Accepted Answer

Enable Cloud SQL High Availability (HA) configuration.. Enabling Cloud SQL High Availability (HA) configuration provisions a standby instance in a different zone within the same region, using synchronous replication to ensure zero data loss. In the event of a zone outage, Cloud SQL automatically fails over to the standby instance, typically within 60 seconds, providing high availability without manual intervention.

Answer

Export the database to Cloud Storage and import in another region.

Answer

Create a cross-region read replica.

Answer

Configure automated backups.

Question 13

Refer to the exhibit. What is the effect of this IAM policy on a Cloud Storage bucket?

Accepted Answer

Alice and all users from example.com can view objects.. The IAM policy grants the `storage.objectViewer` role to both the user `alice@example.com` and the domain `example.com`. This means Alice and all authenticated users from the example.com domain (i.e., any Google account ending in @example.com) can view objects in the bucket. The correct answer is C because the policy explicitly includes both principals.

Answer

All users from example.com can view objects.

Answer

Only Alice can view objects.

Answer

Alice can view objects but not list buckets.

Question 14

A company is deploying a multi-tier web application on Google Cloud. The application must comply with PCI DSS. Which combination of Google Cloud services should be used to restrict access to the database tier to only the application tier, while also encrypting data at rest and in transit?

Accepted Answer

Use Cloud SQL with private IP and SSL/TLS, and enable Cloud Key Management Service (KMS) to create a key ring and customer-managed encryption key (CMEK). It meets all PCI DSS requirements: Cloud SQL with private IP ensures the database tier is not exposed to the public internet, restricting access to only the application tier within the same VPC. SSL/TLS encrypts data in transit, and using Cloud KMS with a customer-managed encryption key (CMEK) provides control over encryption keys for data at rest, which is often required for compliance.

Answer

Use Cloud Spanner with private IP and SSL/TLS, and enable Google-managed encryption keys

Answer

Use Cloud SQL with public IP and SSL/TLS, and enable Google-managed encryption keys

Answer

Use Cloud Datastore with secure WebSocket connections and enable customer-managed encryption keys

Question 15

Your company runs an e-commerce platform on Google Cloud. The application is deployed on Compute Engine instances in a managed instance group (MIG) with autoscaling based on CPU utilization. The database uses Cloud SQL for MySQL with a single instance. During a recent flash sale, traffic spiked and the application became slow, resulting in a poor user experience. After analyzing the incident, you discovered that the MIG scaled up but the Cloud SQL instance reached its maximum connections limit, causing some requests to fail. You need to recommend a solution to improve the reliability of the application for future traffic spikes. What should you do?

Accepted Answer

Deploy the Cloud SQL Proxy on each Compute Engine instance to manage database connections more efficiently, and configure a connection pool size that matches the maximum connections of the Cloud SQL instance.. Deploying the Cloud SQL Proxy on each Compute Engine instance provides a secure, efficient way to manage database connections. The proxy can be configured with a connection pool size that matches the Cloud SQL instance's maximum connections, preventing the application from exhausting the database's connection limit. This approach also reduces the overhead of establishing new connections and improves connection reuse, directly addressing the bottleneck during traffic spikes.

Answer

Increase the maximum connections setting on the Cloud SQL instance and also increase the instance's tier to handle more concurrent connections.

Answer

Migrate the database to Cloud Spanner to provide unlimited scalability and automatic sharding.

Answer

Implement a connection pooling library in the application code to reuse database connections and reduce the number of new connections.