Google PCA Practice Test 7 — 10 Questions

Question 1

A startup deploys a web application on Compute Engine instances behind an HTTP load balancer. They need to handle unpredictable spikes in traffic with minimal operational overhead. What is the simplest scaling approach?

Accepted Answer

Use a managed instance group with autoscaling based on CPU utilization. Using a managed instance group with autoscaling automatically adds/removes instances based on demand, requiring minimal manual intervention. Other options either require more complex setup or are not optimal.

Answer

Set up a Kubernetes cluster with horizontal pod autoscaling

Answer

Migrate the application to Cloud Run

Answer

Add more instances manually during peak hours

Question 2

A development team uses Cloud Build for their CI/CD pipeline. They want to reduce build times. Which action is most effective?

Accepted Answer

Enable parallel builds by separating build steps into multiple jobs. Enabling parallel builds by separating build steps into multiple jobs reduces total build time by running independent steps concurrently. Other options are less effective or add complexity.

Answer

Store build artifacts in a Cloud Storage bucket and reuse them

Answer

Use more powerful build machines by specifying larger machine types

Answer

Use a Cloud Run service to run builds asynchronously

Question 3

Refer to the exhibit. A team wants to grant the ability to run queries (but not modify) on BigQuery datasets to a new set of users who have email addresses in the 'example.com' domain. What is the simplest way to achieve this?

Accepted Answer

No action needed; new users with 'example.com' accounts already have the dataViewer role through the existing domain membership. The domain 'example.com' is already bound to the dataViewer role, so any user with an email in that domain automatically has query access. No action is needed.

Answer

Create a new binding with role 'roles/bigquery.dataViewer' and include the new users as members

Answer

Remove the domain binding and only grant access to individual users

Answer

Add the new users to the existing 'domain:example.com' member list

Question 4

A company is deploying a microservices application on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE). They want to optimize costs without sacrificing availability. They have varying traffic patterns. Which strategy should they recommend?

Accepted Answer

Use node auto-provisioning with preemptible nodes.. Node auto-provisioning with preemptible nodes automatically creates node pools based on workload demands and uses cheaper preemptible VMs, reducing cost for variable traffic. Regional clusters focus on high availability, not cost. Committed use discounts lock in usage and are not optimal for variable traffic. GKE Autopilot provides convenience but may not be the most cost-efficient with preemptible options.

Answer

Use committed use discounts with a 3-year term on all nodes.

Answer

Use GKE Autopilot with a single node pool.

Answer

Use a regional cluster with node pools of different machine types.

Question 5

A company runs a large-scale data processing pipeline using Dataflow with streaming data from Pub/Sub. They notice increasing costs due to high data shuffle operations. They want to optimize the pipeline performance and cost. Which approach should they take?

Accepted Answer

Optimize the pipeline by partitioning data and using Combine transforms.. Optimizing pipeline logic to minimize shuffle reduces resource usage and cost. Increasing workers or using larger machine types may improve performance but increase cost. Switching to batch mode would lose real-time processing capability.

Answer

Use a larger machine type for workers.

Answer

Increase the number of workers to reduce shuffle.

Answer

Switch to batch mode overnight.

Question 6

Which TWO actions reduce egress costs when transferring data from Compute Engine to the internet? (Choose 2)

Accepted Answer

Use Cloud CDN to cache content. Options A and D are correct. Using a Cloud CDN caches content at edge locations, reducing egress from origin. Using a Premium Tier network does not reduce egress costs; it may increase. Compressing data reduces egress volume, but it's not always applicable and may affect latency. Moving to a different region does not reduce egress cost. There are only two correct: A and D. Actually, compressing data reduces the amount of data transferred, so that reduces egress cost. Let's reconsider. The correct answers: Using Cloud CDN (caches content, reduces origin egress) and using data compression (reduces size). Option A is correct, option D is correct. Option B (move to lower-cost region) does not reduce egress cost because egress is per GB, same worldwide. Option C (use Premium Tier) increases cost. Option E (use a NAT gateway) does not reduce egress.

Answer

Use Cloud NAT for outbound traffic

Answer

Move instances to a lower-cost region

Answer

Use Premium Tier networking

Question 7

Drag and drop the steps to set up a VPC network peering between two projects in Google Cloud into the correct order.

Question 8

Drag and drop the steps to migrate a Compute Engine VM to a different region using a snapshot into the correct order.

Question 9

The exhibit shows a command to create a Compute Engine instance. The instance is intended to run a web server that needs to access Cloud Storage buckets using its service account. However, the web server fails to read from a storage bucket. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The service account lacks IAM permissions to read from Cloud Storage. Option A is correct because the scopes=cloud-platform grants all cloud API scopes, but authentication may fail if the service account does not have the proper IAM permissions (e.g., storage.objectViewer). Option B is wrong because pd-ssd is fine. Option C is wrong because the tags are for firewall rules, not storage access. Option D is wrong because the SA is specified.

Answer

The service account is not attached to the instance

Answer

The tags http-server and https-server block outbound traffic

Answer

The boot disk type is SSD, which is not compatible with Cloud Storage

Question 10

Drag and drop the steps to configure a Cloud Load Balancer with a backend service consisting of Compute Engine instances into the correct order.