Google PCA Analysing and Optimising Technical and Business Processes Practice Test 4 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company is migrating a large on-premises data warehouse to BigQuery. The data includes sensitive customer information that must be encrypted at rest and in transit. They also need to mask credit card numbers for analysts who do not have a need to see the full number. Which TWO Google Cloud services should they use? (Choose 2.)

Accepted Answer

Cloud Data Loss Prevention (DLP). BigQuery supports column-level security via policy tags using Data Catalog. Data Loss Prevention (DLP) can automatically classify and mask sensitive data such as credit card numbers. Cloud Key Management Service (KMS) is for managing encryption keys but not for masking. Cloud Audit Logs are for auditing, not masking. Cloud Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP) controls access at the application level, not for data masking.

Answer

Cloud Identity-Aware Proxy (IAP)

Answer

Cloud Audit Logs

Answer

Cloud Key Management Service (KMS)

Question 2

A company runs a latency-sensitive web application on Compute Engine in us-east1. They want to improve response times for users in Europe and Asia without changing the application architecture. Which TWO actions should they take? (Choose 2.)

Accepted Answer

Enable Cloud CDN on the load balancer. Cloud CDN caches static content at edge locations globally, reducing latency for users worldwide. Placing a load balancer in multiple regions (multi-region load balancing with proximity-based routing) directs users to the nearest backend region. Using only us-west1 would still leave European users far away. Cloud Armor is for security, not performance. Spot VMs are for cost savings, not latency.

Answer

Use preemptible VMs to reduce cost

Answer

Deploy additional instances in us-west1

Answer

Use Cloud Armor to block high-latency requests

Question 3

A team is designing a disaster recovery plan for a critical application. They need to ensure RPO of less than 1 hour and RTO of less than 4 hours. The application runs on Compute Engine with persistent disks and uses Cloud SQL for MySQL. Which THREE actions should they take? (Choose 3.)

Accepted Answer

Store application configuration and scripts in a multi-regional Cloud Storage bucket. For Compute Engine, taking regular snapshots and creating instances from them in another region meets RPO/RTO. For Cloud SQL, enabling cross-region replication (asynchronous) provides failover capability. Using a single regional managed instance group does not provide DR across regions. Transfer Appliance is for bulk data migration, not DR. A multi-region bucket is for storage but not directly for Compute Engine instances.

Answer

Deploy a Transfer Appliance to copy data to another region weekly

Answer

Use a regional managed instance group and rely on Google's automatic failover

Question 4

A company needs to store petabytes of time-series IoT sensor data and query it with single-digit millisecond latency at millions of reads per second. The data has a simple key-value structure with timestamps. Which Google Cloud database is MOST appropriate?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Bigtable. Cloud Bigtable is designed for petabyte-scale, low-latency, high-throughput NoSQL storage for time-series, IoT, and financial data. It scales horizontally by adding nodes. BigQuery is an analytics warehouse with seconds-to-minutes latency, Cloud SQL is for OLTP with limited QPS, and Firestore is for document data with hierarchical structure.

Answer

BigQuery

Answer

Firestore

Answer

Cloud Spanner

Question 5

A company runs batch machine learning training jobs that can be interrupted. They want to reduce compute costs. Which Compute Engine VM pricing model is MOST cost-effective?

Accepted Answer

Preemptible VMs. Preemptible VMs offer up to 60-91% discount and can be terminated at any time, ideal for batch workloads that are fault-tolerant. Sustained use discounts are automatic but less aggressive. Committed use discounts require 1 or 3 year commitment. Standard VMs are full price.

Answer

Standard VMs

Answer

Sustained use discounts

Answer

Committed use discounts

Question 6

A company is migrating a large Oracle database (5 TB) from on-premises to Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL. They require minimal downtime and automated schema conversion. Which Google Cloud service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Database Migration Service (DMS). Database Migration Service (DMS) supports homogeneous and heterogeneous migrations with minimal downtime and includes schema conversion for Oracle to PostgreSQL via the Database Migration Service with converters. Velostrata is for VM migration, Transfer Appliance for bulk data, and Storage Transfer Service for cloud-to-cloud data.

Answer

Velostrata (Migrate for Compute Engine)

Answer

Transfer Appliance

Answer

Storage Transfer Service

Question 7

A company wants to automatically move data from Cloud Storage Standard to Nearline after 30 days and to Archive after 90 days. Which approach should they use?

Accepted Answer

Set up a Cloud Storage lifecycle policy with rules to transition to Nearline after 30 days and to Archive after 90 days. Cloud Storage lifecycle policies can automatically transition objects between storage classes based on age or other conditions. This is the simplest and most cost-effective method. Manually moving data is not practical. Object versioning helps with retention but not automatic tiering. Requester pays shifts costs but does not move data.

Answer

Write a custom script using Cloud Functions triggered by Pub/Sub to move objects

Answer

Use Object Versioning to automatically change storage class

Answer

Enable Requester Pays on the bucket to reduce storage costs

Question 8

A team runs periodic BigQuery queries on a large dataset. They notice high costs due to full table scans. They want to reduce costs and improve query performance. Which two actions should they take? (Choose two options that best fit the scenario.)

Accepted Answer

Partition the table by a date/timestamp column. This question expects two correct answers. Partitioning by a date/timestamp column (B) allows queries to prune partitions and scan less data. Clustering on frequently filtered columns (D) organizes data by those columns, further reducing the amount scanned. Using SELECT * only when necessary (A) is a best practice but not as impactful as partitioning and clustering, and materialized views (C) pre-aggregate but are not the primary recommendation for reducing full table scans in this scenario.

Answer

Use SELECT * only when necessary

Answer

Use materialized views to pre-aggregate data

Question 9

A company wants to define an SLO for their application's availability. They measure that the application was down for 30 minutes in a 30-day period. What is the availability SLO that they can achieve?

Accepted Answer

99.9%. Availability = (total time - downtime) / total time. 30 days = 43200 minutes. (43200 - 30) / 43200 = 99.93%. The closest higher but achievable SLO would be 99.9%, because 99.95% would allow only 21.6 minutes downtime. Typically SLOs are stated as 99.9%, 99.95%, etc.

Answer

99.5%

Answer

99.99%

Answer

99.95%

Question 10

A company runs a web application on Compute Engine behind a HTTP(S) Load Balancer. They want to reduce latency for users worldwide. Which Google Cloud service should they use?

Accepted Answer

Cloud CDN. Cloud CDN caches content at Google's edge locations, reducing latency for global users. Cloud Armor is for security, Cloud NAT for outbound connectivity, and Cloud VPN for site-to-site VPN.

Answer

Cloud Armor

Answer

Cloud NAT

Answer

Cloud VPN

Question 11

A company is performing a TCO analysis to compare on-premises costs with Google Cloud. Which cost should they include as a hidden operational cost on-premises?

Accepted Answer

Power, cooling, and physical security. On-premises hidden costs include facility costs (power, cooling, space), hardware maintenance, personnel for patching and upgrades. Egress costs are cloud costs, not on-prem. Compute Engine instance cost is a direct cloud cost. Software licenses depend on licensing model.

Answer

Compute Engine instance costs

Answer

Egress charges

Answer

Software license costs

Question 12

A company has a Bigtable instance handling time-series data. Write throughput is below expectations and latency is high. The row key format is `userid_timestamp`. Which row key design change would MOST improve performance?

Accepted Answer

Use a hash of the userid as the row key prefix. Bigtable performance relies on distributing writes across tablets. A row key with a high-cardinality prefix (e.g., hashed userid) avoids hotspots. A timestamp prefix causes all writes to go to the last tablet (hotspot). Reversing timestamp helps but still not as good as hashing. Adding column families does not affect row key distribution.

Answer

Use `timestamp_userid` without reversal

Answer

Add more column families to store different metrics

Answer

Reverse the timestamp and use `timestamp_userid`

Question 13

A company uses Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL and experiences connection spikes that cause connection limits to be exceeded. They need a solution to manage connection pooling. Which approach should they take?

Accepted Answer

Configure PgBouncer on a separate Compute Engine instance to pool connections. Cloud SQL Auth Proxy handles authentication and encryption, but not pooling. PgBouncer is a lightweight connection pooler for PostgreSQL. Cloud SQL does not natively support ProxySQL for PostgreSQL. Scaling up vCPUs increases connection limits but does not pool connections efficiently.

Answer

Use ProxySQL to pool connections

Answer

Increase the number of vCPUs on the Cloud SQL instance

Answer

Use Cloud SQL Auth Proxy with connection pooling enabled

Question 14

A company wants to analyze their Google Cloud spending and receive recommendations for rightsizing resources. Which tool provides this functionality?

Accepted Answer

Active Assist. Active Assist includes recommendations for rightsizing Compute Engine VMs, Cloud SQL instances, and more. BigQuery Reservations is for slot management. Cloud Billing reports show costs but not recommendations. Pricing Calculator estimates costs.

Answer

BigQuery Reservations

Answer

Google Cloud Pricing Calculator

Answer

Cloud Billing reports

Question 15

A company runs a global application that requires strong consistency across regions for financial transactions. Which database should they choose?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Spanner. Cloud Spanner provides global strong consistency and horizontal scaling. Bigtable offers eventual consistency. Firestore provides strong consistency within a region but not globally. Cloud SQL is regional.

Answer

Cloud SQL

Answer

Cloud Bigtable

Answer

Firestore