Google PCA Practice Test 36 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company needs a relational database that can scale horizontally across multiple regions, supports ACID transactions, and provides strong global consistency. Which Google Cloud database should they choose?

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

Accepted Answer

Cloud Spanner. Cloud Spanner is the only Google Cloud database that offers horizontal scaling, ACID transactions, and strong global consistency across regions.

Answer

BigQuery

Answer

Cloud SQL

Answer

Firestore

Question 2

A company wants to implement a disaster recovery strategy for their critical workloads on GCP. They require an RPO of 15 minutes and an RTO of 1 hour. Which THREE components should they include in their architecture? (Choose 3)

Accepted Answer

Multi-region Cloud Storage bucket with object versioning. Multi-region Cloud Storage for backups or data replication, Cloud SQL cross-region replication for databases, and MIGs in a secondary region with a global load balancer for compute failover meet the RPO/RTO. Persistent disk snapshots copied across regions are too slow for 15-minute RPO. Cloud Spanner multi-region is possible but not listed; the combination of these three services provides the required RPO/RTO.

Answer

Persistent disk snapshots copied to a secondary region every 15 minutes

Answer

Cloud CDN to cache content and reduce latency

Question 3

A developer needs to deploy a Python script that processes images uploaded to a Cloud Storage bucket. The script should run only when new objects are created, and should scale automatically with no idle costs. Which GCP service is most appropriate?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Functions. Cloud Functions is an event-driven serverless compute service that can be triggered by Cloud Storage events (e.g., object finalize). It scales automatically, runs only when triggered, and has no idle cost. Cloud Run also works for containers, but the script is lightweight and can be written as a function. App Engine requires manual scaling setup. Compute Engine would have idle cost.

Answer

App Engine Standard Environment

Answer

Compute Engine with a startup script

Answer

Cloud Run

Question 4

A company wants to run containerized applications on Google Cloud with minimal operational overhead. They prefer to use a serverless container platform. Which TWO compute options should they consider? (Choose 2.)

Accepted Answer

GKE Autopilot. Cloud Run (fully managed) is a serverless container platform that abstracts infrastructure. GKE Autopilot is also serverless in the sense that Google manages nodes, but it still requires cluster configuration. However, GKE Autopilot is considered a 'serverless' Kubernetes offering. Cloud Functions is for functions, not containers. GKE Standard requires node management. Compute Engine is not container-focused.

Answer

Compute Engine

Answer

GKE Standard

Answer

Cloud Functions

Question 5

A company is running a critical application on Compute Engine that must be highly available. They want to distribute traffic across multiple instances in different zones and automatically redirect traffic if a zone fails. Which load balancing solution should they use?

Accepted Answer

External HTTP(S) Load Balancer. The external HTTP(S) Load Balancer is a global, proxy-based load balancer that can distribute traffic across multiple regions and zones. It supports health checks and automatically fails over if instances are unhealthy. The external TCP/UDP Load Balancer is regional and does not span zones. Internal load balancers are for private VPC traffic. SSL proxy is for non-HTTP TCP traffic but is global; however, for HTTP traffic, HTTP(S) LB is the best choice.

Answer

SSL Proxy Load Balancer

Answer

Internal HTTP(S) Load Balancer

Answer

External TCP/UDP Load Balancer

Question 6

A company is migrating on-premises workloads to Google Cloud. They have a critical application that requires consistent low-latency access to a database, with read replicas in multiple regions for disaster recovery. The application is expected to grow by 10x over the next year. Which database service and configuration should the architect choose to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Use Cloud Spanner with multi-region configuration. Cloud Spanner with a multi-region configuration is the correct choice because it provides strong global consistency, low-latency reads and writes across regions, and automatic horizontal scaling to handle a 10x growth in workload. Its multi-region replication ensures synchronous replication for disaster recovery while maintaining ACID transactions, which is critical for a database requiring consistent low-latency access.

Answer

Use Cloud Bigtable with multi-region replication

Answer

Use Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL with cross-region read replicas

Answer

Use Firestore in native mode with multi-region location

Question 7

A company wants to connect their on-premises network to Google Cloud with high availability and bandwidth up to 10 Gbps. They need a dedicated connection with a Service Level Agreement (SLA). Which TWO options should they consider? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Cloud Dedicated Interconnect. Cloud Interconnect provides dedicated connections with an SLA. Dedicated Interconnect offers 10 Gbps or more and is a physical connection. Partner Interconnect also provides dedicated bandwidth through a partner, but Classic VPN and HA VPN are over the internet and do not have a bandwidth SLA or dedicated connection.

Answer

Classic VPN

Answer

Cloud CDN

Answer

HA VPN

Question 8

A company is designing a disaster recovery strategy for a critical application running on Compute Engine with a regional managed instance group (MIG) and an HTTP load balancer. They require an RTO of 10 minutes and RPO of 1 hour. The application state is stored in Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL. What is the most cost-effective approach?

Accepted Answer

Use Cloud SQL cross-region replica with a warm standby MIG in the secondary region. Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL supports cross-region replication with a default replication lag typically under 1 hour. For RPO of 1 hour, cross-region replica is sufficient. For RTO of 10 minutes, having a warm standby in another region with a MIG and load balancer configuration that can be promoted quickly meets the requirement. Full active-active is more expensive; restoring from backups is slower; a cold standby may not meet RTO.

Answer

Deploy an active-active configuration across two regions using Cloud Spanner

Answer

Configure a cold standby with a Cloud SQL backup and MIG template in another region

Answer

Take daily exports of Cloud SQL to Cloud Storage and restore in another region

Question 9

A company wants to run a legacy application on Google Cloud that requires a specific operating system version and kernel tuning. The application is not containerised and cannot be easily modified. Which compute service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Compute Engine. Compute Engine provides full control over the virtual machine, including the OS and kernel parameters, making it ideal for legacy applications that require custom configurations.

Answer

Cloud Run

Answer

App Engine Flexible Environment

Answer

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)

Question 10

An e-commerce company uses Cloud SQL for MySQL for their transactional database. During a recent load test, the database experienced high latency under write-heavy workloads. The team needs to improve write performance without changing the application. Which action is most effective?

Accepted Answer

Increase the machine type of the primary instance. Cloud SQL for MySQL supports read replicas for read scalability, but for write-heavy workloads you need a larger machine type (scale up) or use memory optimized. Adding read replicas does not help writes. Enabling binary logging adds overhead. Vertically scaling (increasing vCPUs and RAM) directly improves write throughput. Using Cloud Spanner would require application changes.

Answer

Enable binary logging to improve write performance

Answer

Migrate to Cloud Spanner

Answer

Add multiple read replicas

Question 11

A company uses Cloud Storage for analytics data with lifecycle policies to move objects from Standard to Coldline after 30 days and delete after 365 days. They notice that objects are being deleted after 30 days instead of 365. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The lifecycle rule is set to delete objects after 30 days instead of transitioning to Coldline.. Lifecycle rules apply in order; if a rule is set to delete after 30 days, it will delete regardless of earlier transitions. The most likely issue is that the rules are configured incorrectly: there may be a delete rule with age 30 days overriding the transition rule. The correct order should be: transition to Coldline at 30 days, then delete at 365 days.

Answer

An IAM policy is inadvertently allowing users to delete objects.

Answer

The Coldline storage class has a minimum storage duration of 30 days, causing immediate deletion.

Answer

The bucket is using a uniform bucket-level access policy.

Question 12

A company runs a multi-region application on GKE that requires low-latency access to a shared dataset that is read-heavy and updated frequently. They need a storage solution that supports strong consistency and can scale write throughput. Which TWO Google Cloud services meet these requirements? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Cloud Bigtable. Cloud Bigtable provides strong consistency within a cluster and scales write throughput horizontally. Cloud Spanner offers strong global consistency and scales writes across regions. Both meet the requirements for low-latency, strong consistency, and write scalability.

Answer

Memorystore

Answer

Cloud SQL

Answer

Cloud Firestore

Question 13

A company runs a web application on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) with a Deployment of 5 replicas. They notice that one of the cluster nodes has failed, but the workload remains available. Which THREE GKE features are responsible for maintaining availability? (Choose THREE.)

Accepted Answer

Kubernetes scheduler. ReplicaSet ensures the desired number of pod replicas. Node auto-repair repairs unhealthy nodes. The Kubernetes scheduler reschedules pods from failed nodes to healthy ones. Cluster autoscaler adds/removes nodes but does not directly handle a single node failure. A readiness probe detects if a pod is ready, but not the node failure directly.

Answer

Cluster autoscaler

Answer

Readiness probe

Question 14

A company is running a stateful web application on Compute Engine. They want to achieve high availability by distributing traffic across multiple zones in a region. Which TWO steps should they take? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Create a managed instance group with instances in multiple zones.. Creating an HTTP(S) Load Balancer distributes traffic across instances in multiple zones. Using a managed instance group with multiple zones ensures instances are spread across zones for HA. A TCP Load Balancer is for non-HTTP traffic, and using a single zone or snapshot only does not provide HA.

Answer

Create a snapshot of the boot disk.

Answer

Use a single zone and configure automatic restart.

Answer

Create a TCP Load Balancer.

Question 15

A media company stores large video files that are accessed infrequently (once a quarter) and must be retained for 10 years for compliance. They want to minimize storage cost. Which Cloud Storage class should they use?

Accepted Answer

Archive storage class. Archive storage is the lowest-cost class for data accessed less than once a year. It is ideal for long-term archival with 10-year retention. Standard is for frequent access, Nearline for 30 days, Coldline for 90 days. Archive is the cheapest for infrequent access.

Answer

Standard storage class

Answer

Coldline storage class

Answer

Nearline storage class