Google PCA Practice Test 39 — 15 Questions

Question 1

An organization is migrating a legacy monolithic application to Google Cloud. The application currently runs on a single server with an on-premises database. The application is stateful and requires low-latency access to the database. The migration must minimize downtime and ensure high availability. Which architecture should the company adopt?

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

Accepted Answer

Deploy on Compute Engine with a regional persistent disk and use Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL with regional high availability.. It combines Compute Engine with a regional persistent disk for synchronous replication across zones, ensuring high availability with minimal downtime during a zonal failure. Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL with regional high availability provides a managed, low-latency database with automatic failover, meeting the stateful application's need for low-latency access and high availability without the complexity of container orchestration.

Answer

Deploy on GKE with StatefulSets and use Cloud Spanner for global consistency.

Answer

Deploy on App Engine Standard Environment and use Cloud Firestore in Datastore mode.

Answer

Deploy on Cloud Run and use Cloud SQL with read replicas.

Question 2

A company runs a critical application on Compute Engine instances in a managed instance group (MIG) with autoscaling. During a traffic spike, some instances become unhealthy but are not automatically replaced. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The autohealing health check is misconfigured.. The most likely cause is that the autohealing health check is misconfigured. In a managed instance group, autohealing relies on a health check to detect unhealthy instances and trigger replacement. If the health check is misconfigured (e.g., wrong port, path, or protocol), the MIG will not recognize instances as unhealthy and will not automatically replace them, even during a traffic spike.

Answer

The MIG is regional and one zone failed.

Answer

The instance template has a startup script error.

Answer

The HTTP load balancer's health check is failing.

Question 3

Which THREE are valid methods to connect an on-premises network to a Google Cloud VPC?

Accepted Answer

Dedicated Interconnect. Dedicated Interconnect (A) provides a direct physical connection between your on-premises network and Google Cloud, offering high bandwidth and a Service Level Agreement (SLA) of up to 99.99% availability. It uses a cross-connect in a colocation facility to attach your on-premises router to a Google Cloud router, enabling private, low-latency connectivity to your VPC without traversing the public internet.

Answer

Cloud Router

Answer

VPC peering

Question 4

A company is moving a legacy monolithic application to a microservices architecture on Google Cloud. They want to minimize operational overhead and automatically scale each service independently. Which TWO compute services should they consider? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Cloud Run. Cloud Run (A) is correct because it is a fully managed serverless container platform that abstracts away all infrastructure, scales each containerized microservice automatically (including to zero), and charges only for resources used, directly minimizing operational overhead. GKE Autopilot (E) is correct because it is a fully managed Kubernetes mode where Google provisions and manages the nodes and control plane, while still providing Kubernetes orchestration that lets each microservice scale independently with minimal operational burden. Compute Engine with managed instance groups (B) is not ideal because it requires managing VMs, OS patching, and capacity planning, which increases operational overhead. GKE Standard (C) is not the best fit because, although it orchestrates containers, the cluster's nodes and infrastructure remain the customer's responsibility, adding operational overhead compared to Autopilot. Cloud Functions (D) is not appropriate here because it is an event-driven FaaS for short-lived functions, not a general platform for running long-lived containerized microservices.

Answer

Compute Engine with managed instance groups

Answer

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) Standard

Answer

Cloud Functions

Question 5

A company runs a monolithic application on Compute Engine. They want to modernize by moving to microservices on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) to improve deployment frequency and resource utilization. However, they are concerned about the increased operational complexity. Which approach best balances modernization benefits with operational overhead?

Accepted Answer

Identify stateless components to migrate to Cloud Run, and keep stateful components on GKE with managed services like Cloud Spanner.. It pragmatically balances modernization benefits with operational overhead by migrating only stateless components to Cloud Run (a fully managed serverless platform that reduces operational complexity) while keeping stateful components on GKE with managed services like Cloud Spanner. This approach improves deployment frequency and resource utilization without requiring a full rewrite, and it leverages Cloud Run's automatic scaling and zero infrastructure management to minimize operational burden.

Answer

Keep the monolithic application on Compute Engine and use Cloud Monitoring to optimize resource utilization.

Answer

Migrate all application components to Cloud Run and use Cloud Tasks for asynchronous communication.

Answer

Rewrite the entire application as microservices and deploy on GKE with Istio for service mesh.

Question 6

A startup wants to run a containerized web application that scales to zero when not in use and charges only for request processing time. Which compute service is most appropriate?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Run. Cloud Run is a fully managed serverless container platform that scales to zero when idle and bills only for request processing time (and CPU/memory during request handling). It is purpose-built for containerized HTTP workloads with automatic scaling, making it the exact match for the startup's requirements.

Answer

Google Kubernetes Engine (Autopilot)

Answer

Compute Engine with preemptible VMs

Answer

App Engine Standard

Question 7

An organization needs to store API keys and database passwords securely in Google Cloud. They want to automatically rotate secrets every 30 days. Which service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Secret Manager. Secret Manager supports automatic rotation with a rotation period and can trigger a Cloud Function to generate a new secret version.

Answer

Cloud Storage with bucket-level encryption

Answer

Cloud Key Management Service (Cloud KMS)

Answer

Cloud Runtime Configurator

Question 8

What is the purpose of a Pod Disruption Budget (PDB) in GKE?

Accepted Answer

To ensure a minimum number of pods are always available during voluntary disruptions. A Pod Disruption Budget (PDB) in GKE (and Kubernetes generally) limits the number of pods of a replicated application that can be voluntarily disrupted at once, ensuring a minimum number (minAvailable) or maximum unavailable (maxUnavailable) is maintained. It applies to voluntary disruptions like node drains during upgrades, not involuntary ones like node crashes. This keeps the application highly available during maintenance operations.

Answer

To automatically scale pods based on CPU usage

Answer

To distribute pods across different zones

Answer

To prevent any pod from being terminated

Question 9

A company is building a web application on GKE. They want to automatically scale the number of pods based on HTTP request rate. Which TWO resources should they configure?

Accepted Answer

Custom Metrics API (e.g., Stackdriver Adapter). Option D, the Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA), is correct because it is the Kubernetes controller that automatically scales the number of pod replicas in a Deployment, ReplicaSet, or StatefulSet based on observed metrics, which is exactly what is needed to scale pods by HTTP request rate. Option B, the Custom Metrics API (e.g., Stackdriver Adapter), is correct because HTTP request rate is not a built-in resource metric like CPU or memory; the HPA must retrieve such application-level metrics through the Custom Metrics API (implemented by an adapter such as the Stackdriver/Cloud Monitoring adapter) to drive scaling decisions. Option A, Cluster Autoscaler, is not correct because it scales the number of nodes in the cluster, not the number of pods, and node scaling is a separate concern from request-rate-based pod scaling. Option C, GKE Ingress, is not correct because Ingress manages external HTTP(S) routing and load balancing to Services, not pod replica counts. Option E, Vertical Pod Autoscaler, is not correct because VPA adjusts CPU and memory requests/limits of existing pods rather than scaling the number of pods based on HTTP request rate.

Answer

Cluster Autoscaler (Node Auto-scaling)

Answer

GKE Ingress

Answer

Vertical Pod Autoscaler (VPA)

Question 10

A company requires a globally distributed relational database with strong consistency across regions and automatic replication. They need to support SQL queries and have a write throughput of 100,000 writes per second. Which Google Cloud database meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Spanner. Cloud Spanner is a globally distributed, strongly consistent relational database that supports SQL and can scale to millions of writes per second. Cloud SQL is regional, Bigtable is NoSQL and not relational, BigQuery is an analytics warehouse.

Answer

Cloud Bigtable

Answer

BigQuery

Answer

Cloud SQL with cross-region replication

Question 11

A company wants to implement an event-driven architecture where uploads to a Cloud Storage bucket trigger processing in a serverless function. The function must process each object within a few seconds and handle bursts of thousands of uploads. Which service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Functions. Cloud Functions is the correct choice because it is a fully managed, event-driven serverless compute service that natively triggers on Cloud Storage bucket events (e.g., object finalize/create). It automatically scales from zero to thousands of concurrent invocations within seconds, meeting the burst requirement, and has a maximum timeout of 9 minutes (well above the 'few seconds' requirement).

Answer

Google Kubernetes Engine

Answer

Cloud Run for Anthos

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Compute Engine with autoscaling

Question 12

A company wants to run batch processing workloads that can be interrupted and resumed, at the lowest possible cost. The jobs are fault-tolerant and can handle preemption. They also need predictable pricing for a baseline amount of compute. Which combination of compute options should they use?

Accepted Answer

Use committed use discounts for baseline capacity and preemptible VMs for additional burst capacity. Committed use discounts (CUDs) provide predictable, discounted pricing for a baseline amount of compute that the company commits to using over a one- or three-year term. Preemptible (spot) VMs are significantly cheaper for the burst capacity that can tolerate interruption. Combining the two gives the lowest overall cost while maintaining predictable pricing for the baseline and flexibility for the fault-tolerant batch workloads.

Answer

Use spot VMs for all workloads and rely on automatic restart

Answer

Use standard VMs with sustained use discounts

Answer

Use only preemptible VMs for all workloads

Question 13

A company wants to store backup data that is accessed rarely but must be available for retrieval within minutes. Which Cloud Storage class is appropriate?

Accepted Answer

Nearline. Nearline storage is designed for data accessed less than once a month but requires retrieval within minutes, making it ideal for backup data that needs quick availability. It offers lower cost than Standard storage while still supporting sub-minute retrieval times, aligning with the scenario's access and latency requirements.

Answer

Standard

Answer

Coldline

Answer