Google PCA Practice Test 49 — 15 Questions

Question 1

Your company runs a stateful application on Compute Engine instances in a managed instance group. The application requires that each instance maintains a unique identity and persistent storage. You need to ensure that instances can be recreated without data loss and that they retain their identities. What should you do?

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

Accepted Answer

Use a stateful managed instance group (MIG) with instance names and persistent disks.. A stateful managed instance group (MIG) preserves instance names, persistent disks, and metadata across recreations, ensuring that each instance retains its identity and data. It is the recommended solution for stateful workloads on Compute Engine. Other options either use ephemeral storage, lack automation, or do not preserve identity.

Answer

Configure the MIG to use preemptible instances and attach a local SSD to each instance.

Answer

Create a separate unmanaged instance group and manually attach persistent disks to each instance.

Answer

Use a stateless MIG and store application state in a shared Cloud Storage bucket.

Question 2

A healthcare company runs a critical patient portal on Compute Engine. The portal uses a Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL database. The company needs to perform a major version upgrade of the database with minimal downtime and wants to minimize the risk of data loss. They also want to be able to roll back quickly if issues arise. Which approach should they take?

Accepted Answer

Use Database Migration Service to migrate to a new Cloud SQL instance with the desired major version, then switch over.. Database Migration Service enables a minimal-downtime migration to a new Cloud SQL instance with the desired major version. It continuously replicates data, so the cutover is quick and the original instance remains available for rollback. This approach minimizes data loss risk and downtime, unlike in-place upgrades or export/import.

Answer

Use Cloud SQL's in-place major version upgrade feature during a maintenance window, and rely on automated backups for rollback.

Answer

Export the database to a Cloud Storage bucket, create a new instance with the new version, and import the data.

Answer

Create a read replica, promote it to primary, and then upgrade the original instance.

Question 3

Your team runs a stateful analytics workload on a Managed Instance Group (MIG) of Compute Engine VMs. The VMs write intermediate results to local SSD scratch disks. During a recent incident, an autoscaling event terminated VMs and the intermediate data was lost, causing hours of recomputation. You need to change the deployment so that when a VM is terminated by the autoscaler, a shutdown script has enough time to flush the intermediate results to a Cloud Storage bucket before the VM is deleted. What should you do?

Accepted Answer

Configure the instance template with a shutdown script and set the instance's shutdown duration metadata key to a value that gives the script enough time to flush data.. The shutdown duration metadata key is the supported mechanism to extend the STOPPING state so a shutdown script can finish. Because the MIG creates instances from the instance template, placing the key in the template guarantees that autoscaler-created VMs inherit the behavior. Autoscaler tuning and disk-type changes do not bound the time between the shutdown signal and instance deletion.

Answer

Replace the local SSD scratch disks with Persistent Disk volumes and rely on the autoscaler to detach them before deleting the VM.

Answer

Enable live migration on the MIG and set the autoscaler to scale in only during off-peak hours.

Answer

Set the MIG autoscaler's scale-in control to a longer cool-down period, and increase the instance template's minimum CPU utilization target.

Question 4

A financial services firm runs a global trading platform on Google Cloud. The architecture must survive the loss of an entire region with a recovery point objective of zero and a recovery time objective of under one minute, and it must keep strong consistency for order records. Which design should the architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Deploy the application in two regions behind a global external Application Load Balancer, and store order records in Cloud Spanner with a multi-region instance configuration.. Zero RPO with sub-minute RTO for transactional records requires synchronous replication plus automated failover. Cloud Spanner multi-region configurations replicate synchronously and expose externally consistent reads and writes, so a committed order survives a full region outage. The global external Application Load Balancer provides anycast front ends and health-check-based failover to the surviving region. Together they deliver the availability and consistency guarantees the trading platform needs without manual intervention.

Answer

Deploy the application in two regions behind a global external Application Load Balancer, and store order records in a Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL instance with a cross-region read replica promoted on failover.

Answer

Deploy the application in two regions behind a global external Application Load Balancer, and store order records in a Bigtable instance with a multi-cluster routing policy.

Answer

Deploy the application in two regions behind a global external Application Load Balancer, and store order records in a multi-region Cloud Storage bucket mounted as a file system on the application VMs.

Question 5

A startup is deploying a new web application on Google Cloud. They want to minimize infrastructure management and focus on writing code. The application consists of a frontend and a backend API, and they expect variable traffic. They also want to pay only for what they use. Which Google Cloud service should the solutions architect recommend for deploying the application?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Run.. Cloud Run is a serverless compute platform that runs stateless containers, scales automatically with traffic, and charges only for resources consumed during request processing. It eliminates infrastructure management, letting the startup focus on code. Its ability to scale to zero and handle variable traffic makes it ideal for a frontend and backend API with unpredictable load.

Answer

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) with Autopilot.

Answer

App Engine standard environment.

Answer

Compute Engine with managed instance groups.

Question 6

Your organization is using Google Cloud to host a web application that experiences unpredictable traffic spikes. You need to ensure the application scales automatically and maintains high availability across multiple zones. The application runs on Compute Engine instances behind a load balancer. What should you do?

Accepted Answer

Create a managed instance group with an autoscaling policy based on CPU utilization, and configure the group to span multiple zones. Place the instance group behind an external HTTP(S) load balancer.. A managed instance group with autoscaling and multi-zone deployment provides automatic scaling and high availability. An external HTTP(S) load balancer is designed for web traffic, offering global distribution and SSL termination. This combination meets the requirements for unpredictable traffic and multi-zone availability.

Answer

Create an unmanaged instance group with instances in multiple zones, and manually add or remove instances based on traffic. Use a network load balancer to distribute traffic.

Answer

Deploy the application on a single Compute Engine instance with a powerful machine type, and use a global load balancer to direct traffic to it. Configure a health check to restart the instance if it fails.

Answer

Use a regional managed instance group with autoscaling, and place it behind an internal TCP/UDP load balancer. Configure the load balancer to distribute traffic across zones.

Question 7

Your company runs a microservices application on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE). The development team complains that they lack visibility into which service is causing latency spikes during peak hours. You need to implement a solution that provides distributed tracing and service-level metrics without modifying application code. Which approach should you use?

Accepted Answer

Deploy Anthos Service Mesh and enable its built-in telemetry features, including Cloud Trace and Cloud Monitoring integration.. Anthos Service Mesh provides automatic telemetry collection, including distributed tracing and service-level metrics, without requiring changes to application code. It leverages sidecar proxies to capture traffic and integrates with Cloud Trace and Cloud Monitoring, giving the needed visibility into latency spikes. Other options either require code instrumentation or do not provide the necessary tracing and metrics.

Answer

Install the Cloud Logging agent on each node and create log-based metrics for latency.

Answer

Use Cloud Profiler to continuously profile the application and identify latency bottlenecks.

Answer

Enable Cloud Trace on the GKE cluster and instrument each service with the OpenTelemetry SDK.

Question 8

Your team is deploying a new three-tier application to Google Cloud. The security team requires that the application's Compute Engine instances never receive public IP addresses, yet the instances must still download OS patches from the public internet and reach a third-party REST API over HTTPS. You need to implement this with the least operational overhead. What should you do?

Accepted Answer

Configure Cloud NAT on a Cloud Router in the region, and create a route so instances without external IP addresses can reach the internet.. Cloud NAT provides managed, regional outbound internet access for instances that have no external IP address. It satisfies both the security constraint and the functional need for patch downloads and third-party API calls, without introducing proxy servers, ephemeral public addresses, or on-premises dependencies. This is the lowest-overhead native option.

Answer

Create a VPN tunnel from the VPC to an on-premises network and route all internet-bound traffic through that network.

Answer

Assign each instance an ephemeral external IP address and use firewall rules to block all inbound traffic on every port.

Answer

Deploy a third-party forward proxy on a Compute Engine instance with an external IP address and point all instances at it.

Question 9

A company is deploying a global web application on Google Cloud. The application serves static content from a Cloud Storage bucket and dynamic content from a managed instance group backend. They want to use a single global IP address and provide low latency to users worldwide. They also want to protect the application from DDoS attacks. Which solution should they implement?

Accepted Answer

Configure an external HTTP(S) load balancer with a global anycast IP address, a backend service for the managed instance group, and a backend bucket for the Cloud Storage bucket. Enable Cloud CDN and Google Cloud Armor.. The external HTTP(S) load balancer provides a global anycast IP and supports both backend services and backend buckets, allowing static and dynamic content to be served from the same IP. Cloud CDN caches static content for low latency, and Cloud Armor protects against DDoS and other attacks. This integrated solution meets all the requirements without third-party dependencies.

Answer

Use a global external HTTP(S) load balancer with a single backend service that points to both the managed instance group and the Cloud Storage bucket using a hybrid connectivity network endpoint group (NEG).

Answer

Deploy a third-party DDoS protection service in front of the application, and use a network load balancer with a global IP address for both backends.

Answer

Create a global TCP proxy load balancer with a global IP address, and configure backends for the managed instance group and Cloud Storage bucket.

Question 10

A company is planning to migrate a batch processing workload to Google Cloud. The workload runs nightly and can be interrupted without impacting the business. The company wants to minimize compute costs. Which Google Cloud service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Compute Engine Spot VMs. Spot VMs provide the deepest discounts for interruptible workloads and have no maximum runtime limit, unlike preemptible VMs. They are perfect for batch processing that can be paused or restarted. Committed use discounts require long-term commitments, and GKE Autopilot adds unnecessary complexity for a simple batch job. Spot VMs minimize compute costs while meeting the workload's tolerance for interruptions.

Answer

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) with Autopilot

Answer

Compute Engine committed use discounts (CUDs)

Answer

Compute Engine preemptible VMs

Question 11

A startup wants to deploy a containerized web application that must scale automatically based on incoming HTTP request volume and must be reachable at a stable HTTPS endpoint. The team has no Kubernetes experience and wants to minimize infrastructure management. Which Google Cloud service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Run, with the container deployed as a service and request concurrency used to drive automatic scaling.. Cloud Run is a fully managed container platform that scales automatically in response to request volume and exposes an HTTPS endpoint by default. Because it abstracts away clusters and VMs, it fits a team without Kubernetes skills that wants to minimize infrastructure management while still running a containerized web application.

Answer

Google Kubernetes Engine Autopilot with a HorizontalPodAutoscaler and an Ingress resource.

Answer

Compute Engine managed instance groups with an HTTP(S) load balancer and autoscaling based on CPU.

Answer

App Engine flexible environment with automatic scaling enabled and a custom runtime.

Question 12

A logistics company has a BigQuery dataset that is queried heavily by scheduled reports each morning. Finance wants predictable monthly spend and the ability to attribute query cost to each department. Analysts currently run ad hoc queries against on-demand pricing, and costs vary widely month to month. What should the architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

Create a separate project per department and enable BigQuery reservations with slot commitments assigned to each project.. Reservations with committed slots turn variable on-demand query charges into a fixed, forecastable monthly figure, and assigning capacity per project makes each department's usage attributable. This satisfies the finance requirement directly, whereas quotas merely cap usage and alternative engines add complexity without solving the predictability and attribution goals.

Answer

Set a custom quota on bytes billed per day for each department's service account and let queries fail when the quota is reached.

Answer

Enable the BigQuery flat-rate legacy pricing model by purchasing a fixed number of slots per project.

Answer

Move the dataset to Cloud Bigtable and run the scheduled reports with a Dataflow job each morning.

Question 13

A startup runs a batch analytics job on a single Compute Engine instance that takes about nine hours and reads 2 TB from a Cloud Storage bucket each run. The team wants to reduce cost without changing the application code, and the job can be interrupted and resumed from checkpoints. Which machine configuration should the architect recommend?

Accepted Answer

A Spot VM with local SSD scratch space, since the job reads data from Cloud Storage and can resume from checkpoints.. Spot VMs provide the largest discount available on Compute Engine and are appropriate when a workload can tolerate preemption and resume from checkpoints. Because the job reads its source data from Cloud Storage and only uses local SSD as scratch, losing the instance mid-run does not corrupt results, so the cost reduction comes with acceptable risk.

Answer

A sole-tenant node with a custom machine type sized to the job's peak memory usage.

Answer

A standard predefined machine type with a balanced persistent disk, billed on demand.

Answer

A committed use discount for a one-year term on a memory-optimized machine type.

Question 14

A retail company is planning to move its on-premises data warehouse to Google Cloud. They need a fully managed, petabyte-scale analytics database that supports standard SQL and can ingest data in real time from Pub/Sub. They also want to minimize administration and cost. Which Google Cloud service should they choose?

Accepted Answer

BigQuery. BigQuery is the correct choice because it is a fully managed, petabyte-scale analytics database that supports standard SQL and integrates with Pub/Sub for real-time data ingestion. It minimizes administration and offers cost-effective pricing, making it ideal for moving an on-premises data warehouse to Google Cloud.

Answer

Bigtable

Answer

Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL

Answer

Cloud Spanner

Question 15

A startup is deploying a new web application on Compute Engine. The application runs on a managed instance group and must be accessible from the internet over HTTP and HTTPS. The security team requires that the application be protected against common web attacks such as SQL injection and cross-site scripting. Which Google Cloud service should the architect use to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Armor with a security policy attached to the backend service of an external HTTP(S) load balancer.. Cloud Armor is the correct service because it provides a web application firewall with preconfigured rules for SQL injection and cross-site scripting, and it integrates directly with external HTTP(S) load balancers. Attaching a security policy to the backend service enforces these protections at the edge before traffic reaches the application.

Answer

Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP) with OAuth consent screen and context-aware access policies.

Answer

VPC firewall rules that allow only HTTP and HTTPS traffic to the managed instance group.

Answer

Cloud CDN with signed URLs and origin access identity to restrict access to the backend instances.