Google PCA Designing and Planning a Cloud Solution Architecture Practice Test 5 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A startup wants to deploy a containerized web application with zero server management and automatic scaling based on HTTP requests. They expect very low traffic initially but want to scale to thousands of requests per second without configuration changes. Which compute service is most appropriate?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Run. Cloud Run is a fully managed serverless container platform that automatically scales to zero when not in use and scales up to handle traffic spikes, ideal for containerized apps with variable traffic.

Answer

Compute Engine with managed instance groups

Answer

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) Standard

Answer

App Engine Standard

Question 2

A company runs a batch processing job every night that takes 4 hours on a single n2-standard-8 VM. They are willing to accept up to 2 minutes of additional completion time in exchange for significant cost savings. The job is fault-tolerant and can be restarted if interrupted. Which compute option should they use?

Accepted Answer

Use a spot VM (preemptible) with a custom machine type n2-standard-8. Preemptible VMs offer up to 80% discount but can be terminated at any time. Since the job is fault-tolerant and can handle interruptions, this is the best cost-saving option with minimal impact on completion time.

Answer

Reserve an n2-standard-8 with a 1-year committed use discount

Answer

Deploy on Cloud Run with 8 vCPUs

Answer

Use a sole-tenant node with the n2-standard-8 machine type

Question 3

A media company stores raw video files in a Cloud Storage bucket with Standard storage class. The files are accessed frequently for the first 30 days after upload, then rarely after that. Compliance requires retention of all files for 7 years. They want to minimise storage costs while ensuring files are retrievable within 24 hours of a request. Which storage strategy meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Use a lifecycle policy to transition objects to Coldline after 30 days, then to Archive after 1 year, and keep them for 7 years.. Option B is correct because it uses a Cloud Storage lifecycle policy to transition objects from Standard to Coldline after 30 days (when access drops), then to Archive after 1 year, minimizing costs while meeting the 7-year retention requirement. Archive storage is the cheapest option for long-term data, and objects can be retrieved within 24 hours (typical restore time for Archive), satisfying the compliance and retrieval SLA.

Answer

Keep objects in Standard for 7 years and use object versioning to reduce costs.

Answer

Use a lifecycle policy to transition objects to Nearline after 30 days, then to Coldline after 1 year, and delete after 7 years.

Answer

Use a lifecycle policy to move objects to Archive immediately, as it is the cheapest storage class.

Question 4

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?

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 5

A financial services company wants to migrate a legacy monolithic Java application to Google Cloud with minimal changes to the code. They plan to containerise the application but want to avoid managing Kubernetes clusters. The application requires persistent storage and must be reachable via an internal IP address within the VPC. Which compute service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Run (fully managed). Cloud Run (fully managed) supports containers, can be configured for internal traffic only, and provides persistent storage via Cloud NFS or other volume mounts. It abstracts away cluster management.

Answer

Compute Engine with Docker installed

Answer

Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) Autopilot

Answer

App Engine Flexible Environment

Question 6

An e-commerce company uses Cloud SQL for MySQL to handle user sessions. During Black Friday sales, the database experiences high read latency and connection timeouts. The traffic pattern shows 95% read operations and 5% write operations. They need to improve read performance without significant architectural changes. Which action should they take?

Accepted Answer

Add Cloud SQL read replicas and configure the application to use them for read operations.. Adding read replicas offloads read traffic from the primary instance, improving read latency and reducing connection timeouts. Read replicas are easy to configure and cost-effective.

Answer

Enable Cloud SQL Proxy to reduce connection overhead.

Answer

Migrate from Cloud SQL to Cloud Spanner for better scalability.

Answer

Enable automatic storage increases and increase the machine type of the primary instance.

Question 7

A gaming company needs to store player session data that is frequently updated and requires strong consistency within a single region. The data model is simple key-value with few attributes. They expect up to 1 million concurrent players, each performing 10 writes per second. Which database is most suitable?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Bigtable. Cloud Bigtable is a NoSQL wide-column database designed for high-throughput, low-latency workloads. It can handle millions of writes per second and provides strong consistency within a single cluster.

Answer

Cloud SQL

Answer

Firestore

Answer

Memorystore

Question 8

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 9

A company is deploying a multi-region web application that must provide sub-second read latency globally for a small dataset (under 100 MB) that is updated infrequently. They want a fully managed service that caches data close to users. Which service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Cloud CDN. Cloud CDN with HTTP(S) Load Balancing caches static content at edge locations globally, providing low-latency access. For small, infrequently updated data, CDN is cost-effective and simple.

Answer

Memorystore for Redis with replication across regions

Answer

Cloud Spanner multi-region

Answer

Cloud Firestore in multi-region mode

Question 10

A company uses GKE Standard with node pools of preemptible VMs for batch jobs. They notice that during preemption events, pods take several minutes to become ready on new nodes because container images are large. They need to reduce startup time. Which approach is most effective?

Accepted Answer

Configure a DaemonSet to pre-pull the container image on all nodes.. GKE with node auto-provisioning and a node pool of preemptible VMs using a daemonset to pre-pull images on all nodes ensures images are cached locally, reducing startup time after preemption.

Answer

Switch to GKE Autopilot.

Answer

Increase the size of the node pool.

Answer

Use a stateful set with persistent volumes to reuse data.

Question 11

A company needs to connect their on-premises data center to Google Cloud with a dedicated, low-latency connection that provides a Service Level Agreement (SLA) of 99.99% uptime. They anticipate high bandwidth usage (10 Gbps). Which connectivity option should they choose?

Accepted Answer

Dedicated Interconnect. Dedicated Interconnect provides a direct physical connection between on-premises and GCP, offers up to 10 Gbps per circuit, and comes with a 99.99% SLA when configured with redundant connections.

Answer

Cloud VPN with static routing

Answer

Cloud CDN

Answer

Partner Interconnect

Question 12

A company runs a critical application on Compute Engine that must remain available even if an entire zone fails. They have configured a managed instance group across three zones with autoscaling based on CPU utilization. The application state is stored in a Cloud SQL instance. Which additional step should they take to ensure high availability?

Accepted Answer

Configure a regional Cloud SQL instance with primary and standby in different zones.. Cloud SQL provides high availability with a standby instance in a different zone using regional persistent disk. This ensures failover if the primary zone fails.

Answer

Use a Cloud Load Balancer in front of the managed instance group.

Answer

Deploy a read replica of the Cloud SQL instance in another region.

Answer

Take frequent snapshots of the boot disk and store them in a multi-regional bucket.

Question 13

A company is migrating a legacy monolithic application to Google Cloud. They want to minimise changes while taking advantage of cloud benefits. Which TWO migration strategies are most appropriate? (Choose TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Lift-and-shift (rehost) to Compute Engine. Lift-and-shift (rehost) moves the application as-is with minimal changes. Replatform makes limited adjustments (e.g., using a managed database) without changing the core architecture. Both reduce risk and effort compared to re-architecting.

Answer

Re-architect (refactor) into microservices

Answer

Retire the application

Answer

Replace (repurchase) with SaaS

Question 14

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 15

A company is designing a disaster recovery plan for a critical application running on Compute Engine with data in Cloud SQL. They require a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 1 hour and a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 5 minutes. Which THREE actions should they take? (Choose THREE.)

Accepted Answer

Configure a Cloud SQL cross-region replica in the DR region. Cloud SQL replica in another region provides cross-region replication with RPO of seconds to minutes. Managed instance group in the DR region allows quick failover of compute. Cloud DNS with weighted routing can direct traffic to the DR region upon failover, meeting RTO within 1 hour.

Answer

Enable Cloud SQL automatic storage increase

Answer

Use Cloud CDN to cache static content globally