Google PCA Practice Test 27 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company uses GKE with Istio for service mesh. They want to implement a canary deployment for a critical service with fine-grained traffic splitting. Which THREE components should they configure? (Choose three.)

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

Accepted Answer

Kubernetes Service. Istio uses VirtualService, DestinationRule, and Kubernetes Service to achieve canary deployments. VirtualService defines traffic routing rules, DestinationRule defines subsets (versions), and Kubernetes Service serves as a stable endpoint. Ingress Gateway is for external traffic, not internal. HorizontalPodAutoscaler is for scaling, not routing.

Answer

Ingress Gateway

Answer

HorizontalPodAutoscaler

Question 2

A company has two on-premises data centers connected to Google Cloud via two Dedicated Interconnect connections (each 10 Gbps) from different providers. They want to achieve the highest availability for connectivity. Which configuration should they use?

Accepted Answer

Configure two VLAN attachments on each Interconnect with separate BGP sessions. For highest availability, use two separate VLAN attachments on each Interconnect connection, with BGP sessions on each. This provides redundancy at multiple levels. Using a single VLAN attachment or single Interconnect reduces availability. Cloud Router with active/passive is less optimal than active/active.

Answer

Configure one VLAN attachment per Interconnect and use BGP with active/passive

Answer

Use a single VLAN attachment and rely on the second Interconnect as a backup

Answer

Configure each Interconnect with a single VLAN attachment and use Cloud Router with active/active BGP

Question 3

Your organization runs a microservices application on GKE Autopilot. You want to implement a gradual rollout of a new version with the ability to compare performance metrics between the old and new versions. Which TWO approaches should you combine?

Accepted Answer

Configure A/B testing with Traffic Director by routing based on request headers.. A canary deployment gradually shifts traffic to the new version. Traffic Director provides service mesh capabilities including traffic splitting and metrics. Istio can also be used. A/B testing requires routing rules based on headers or other criteria; Traffic Director can do this. Cloud Deploy supports canary but does not handle A/B testing natively. The combination of canary deployment (via Traffic Director) and A/B testing (with Traffic Director's routing rules) allows gradual rollout and comparison.

Answer

Use Cloud Deploy's rollout strategy with a canary phase.

Answer

Use Cloud Load Balancing to gradually shift traffic from old to new version.

Answer

Use GKE blue-green deployment and manually compare metrics.

Question 4

A company wants to implement canary deployments on GKE to gradually roll out a new version of a microservice. They need to route a small percentage of traffic to the new version initially. Which tool can they use to achieve traffic splitting?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Deploy with a Service Mesh like Istio. Cloud Deploy supports canary deployments with traffic splitting using Service Mesh (Istio) or other ingresses. Istio itself can also be used directly. Cloud Load Balancing can do traffic splitting but not as part of a deployment pipeline. Cloud Shell is just a terminal. Cloud Deployment Manager is for infrastructure deployment.

Answer

Cloud Load Balancing

Answer

Cloud Shell

Answer

Cloud Deployment Manager

Question 5

An organization wants to connect its on-premises data center to Google Cloud with a consistent 10 Gbps bandwidth and a 99.99% availability SLA. They already have a Dedicated Interconnect connection, but need to ensure high availability. What should they do?

Question 6

An e-commerce platform uses Cloud Spanner for order processing. The operations team notices that a recent schema change caused a spike in latency. They need to quickly revert to the previous schema without losing any data. What is the fastest way to achieve this?

Accepted Answer

Restore the database from a backup taken before the schema change, using point-in-time recovery.. Cloud Spanner does not support automatic schema rollback. The best approach is to use database migration tools like Skipper or use versioned migrations. However, Spanner supports creating a new table with the old schema and copying data. The fastest way to revert a schema change is to restore from a backup that was taken before the change. Cloud Spanner supports point-in-time recovery (PITR) within the retention period (7 days). If a backup exists, restore it to a new database and redirect traffic. Rolling back via DDL statements is possible but may be complex if data has been added or altered.

Answer

Manually write DDL statements to revert the schema, and use a script to fix any data inconsistencies.

Answer

Export the database, drop and recreate the database with the old schema, and import the data.

Answer

Use Cloud Spanner's built-in DDL rollback feature to revert the schema change.

Question 7

A company is deploying a web application on Google Kubernetes Engine. The application serves HTTP traffic and needs to scale based on CPU utilization. They also need to expose the application to the internet with a single global IP address. They create a Deployment with a HorizontalPodAutoscaler. However, the application is not receiving traffic from the internet. What should they do to expose the application correctly?

Accepted Answer

Create an Ingress resource with the GCE ingress controller.. The correct approach is to create an Ingress resource with the GCE ingress controller because it provides a single global IP address via an HTTP(S) load balancer, which is required for internet-facing traffic. The HorizontalPodAutoscaler scales the Deployment based on CPU utilization, but the application must be exposed through a Service (typically of type NodePort or ClusterIP) that the Ingress routes to. The GCE ingress controller automatically provisions a global HTTP(S) load balancer, satisfying the requirement for a single global IP address.

Answer

Create a Service of type NodePort and use a firewall rule to allow traffic.

Answer

Create a Service of type ClusterIP and a load balancer manually.

Answer

Define a Network Endpoint Group (NEG) and attach it to a backend service.

Question 8

A company is designing a disaster recovery (DR) plan for their Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL instance. They need to recover the database to a specific point in time within the last 7 days, with a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of less than 1 hour. Which feature should they use?

Accepted Answer

Point-in-time recovery (PITR). Cloud SQL automated backups combined with point-in-time recovery (PITR) allow recovery to any point in time within the backup retention period (default 7 days) by using transaction logs. PITR enables RPO of less than 1 hour because it uses write-ahead logs.

Answer

Exporting the database daily to Cloud Storage

Answer

Failover replica

Answer

Automated backups only

Question 9

An engineer needs to view the last 100 lines of a log file from a Compute Engine instance without leaving the Google Cloud Console. Which tool should they use?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Shell. Cloud Shell is an in-browser shell that comes pre-installed with gcloud and other tools. The engineer can SSH into the instance from Cloud Shell and use commands like 'tail' to view log lines.

Answer

Cloud Logging in the Console

Answer

Cloud Console's VM instances page

Answer

Cloud SDK installed locally

Question 10

A company wants to set up monitoring and alerting for their application running on GKE. They need to receive alerts via email and also trigger an automated remediation workflow. Which TWO components should they use? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Notification channels (email). Alerting policies define conditions and notifications. Notification channels (email) send alerts. Pub/Sub can trigger Cloud Functions for remediation. Logging is for logs, not alerting. Cloud Shell is a terminal.

Answer

Cloud Shell

Answer

Cloud Logging

Answer

Pub/Sub

Question 11

Your company plans to connect an on-premises data center to Google Cloud with a Dedicated Interconnect. You need to ensure high availability for the connection. What is the minimum configuration required to meet a 99.99% SLA for Dedicated Interconnect?

Accepted Answer

Two Dedicated Interconnect circuits, each in a different edge availability domain, with a Cloud Router for each connection. Dedicated Interconnect requires two separate circuits (each 10 Gbps or 100 Gbps) to achieve a 99.99% SLA. A single circuit provides a 99.9% SLA, and Google Cloud recommends using two circuits in different edge availability domains. Cloud Router alone does not provide redundancy without multiple VLAN attachments and circuits.

Answer

A single Dedicated Interconnect circuit with a Cloud Router configured for BGP advertisements

Answer

One Dedicated Interconnect circuit and one Partner Interconnect connection as a backup

Answer

One Dedicated Interconnect circuit with two VLAN attachments on the same circuit

Question 12

A team is implementing a canary deployment for a microservice on GKE using traffic splitting. They want to gradually shift 1% of traffic to a new version, monitor for errors, and then increase the percentage. Which tool or configuration should they use?

Accepted Answer

Use Cloud Deploy with a canary deployment strategy and Istio traffic splitting. Cloud Deploy supports canary deployments with traffic splitting via Istio or other service meshes. It allows gradual rollout and automated promotion based on criteria.

Answer

Configure a GKE Ingress with weighted backend services

Answer

Deploy the new version to a separate namespace and use DNS weighting

Answer

Use Kubernetes Deployment with rolling update strategy

Question 13

An application running on GKE Autopilot is experiencing intermittent failures due to resource limits. The team wants to ensure that the application always has enough CPU and memory without manual node management. What should they do?

Accepted Answer

Increase the resource requests and limits in the pod specification. GKE Autopilot manages nodes automatically. To ensure resources, they should adjust the resource requests and limits in the pod spec. GKE Autopilot automatically scales nodes based on pod resource requests. They do not need to manage node pools. Increasing machine type is not possible directly in Autopilot.

Answer

Use horizontal pod autoscaling only

Answer

Create a new node pool with larger machine types

Answer

Switch to GKE Standard and manage node pools manually

Question 14

A company wants to perform load testing on a new microservice deployed on GKE. They need to simulate thousands of concurrent users with realistic traffic patterns. They also want to monitor latency and error rates during the test. Which Google Cloud tool should they use?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Load Testing. Cloud Load Testing (formerly known as Cloud Load Testing) is a managed service for creating load tests with distributed agents. It can simulate thousands of users and integrates with Cloud Monitoring. Locust is an open-source tool but not managed by GCP. Cloud Deploy is for continuous delivery. Cloud Shell is a command-line environment.

Answer

Locust

Answer

Cloud Deploy

Answer

Cloud Shell

Question 15

Your team uses Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL for an e-commerce application. You want to perform point-in-time recovery (PITR) to recover from a logical error that occurred 10 minutes ago. Which prerequisites are required?

Accepted Answer

Automated backups must be enabled, and write-ahead logging (WAL) must be active. Cloud SQL PITR requires automated backups and binary logging (for MySQL) or write-ahead logging (for PostgreSQL) to be enabled. Automated backups must be configured, and the instance must be using the appropriate database flags. For PostgreSQL, 'cloudsql.logical_decoding' and 'cloudsql.enable_pitr' are needed.

Answer

Automated backups must be enabled, and the instance must be using the InnoDB storage engine

Answer

Automated backups and binary logging must be enabled

Answer

Point-in-time recovery is not supported for Cloud SQL PostgreSQL