20+ practice questions focused on Ensure solution and operations reliability — one of the most tested topics on the Google Professional Cloud Architect exam. Each question includes a detailed explanation so you learn why the right answer is correct.
Start Ensure solution and operations reliability PracticeA company is designing a disaster recovery plan for a Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL instance. They want to failover to a different region with minimal data loss and recovery time under 10 minutes. The database is 500 GB and experiences 2,000 write transactions per second. Which solution should they use?
Explanation: Both options B and C are valid solutions. Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL supports cross-region read replicas (also referred to as cross-region replicas) that are continuously updated via asynchronous replication. Promoting such a replica to a primary instance typically takes minutes, meeting the RTO under 10 minutes, while replication lag is usually a few seconds, meeting the requirement for minimal data loss. Option B explicitly describes creating a cross-region read replica and promoting it, which is a standard DR practice. Option C describes the same feature using the managed cross-region replication feature. Therefore, both are correct.
A company deploys a stateful workload using StatefulSets on GKE. They want to ensure that if a pod is evicted, its persistent volume claim (PVC) is reattached to the replacement pod in the same zone. Which configuration achieves this?
Explanation: StatefulSets are designed for stateful workloads and guarantee stable network identities and persistent storage. When a pod is evicted, the StatefulSet controller ensures the replacement pod uses the same PVC, which is bound to a GCE Persistent Disk in the same zone as the original pod, provided the volumeClaimTemplate specifies a disk in that zone. This maintains data locality and avoids cross-zone reattachment.
A company runs a web application on Compute Engine behind an HTTP load balancer. They want to improve reliability by implementing failover across two regions. Which TWO actions should they take?
Explanation: Option A is correct because a global external HTTP(S) load balancer uses Google's global anycast VIP and can distribute traffic across backends in multiple regions, providing automatic cross-region failover when a region's backends become unhealthy. Option B is correct because configuring a backend service with a failover policy (failoverRatio and a designated failover backend group) explicitly defines primary and secondary backends so traffic shifts to the secondary group when the primary group's healthy capacity drops below the threshold. Option C is not appropriate because Cloud DNS failover with health checks is a DNS-based approach and does not leverage the HTTP load balancer's native multi-region backend failover; it also introduces DNS TTL delays. Option D is wrong because an internal load balancer is for internal VPC traffic, not for serving external users of a web application. Option E is wrong because a regional external HTTP load balancer cannot span multiple regions with a multi-region backend; only a global external HTTP(S) load balancer supports cross-region backends.
A company uses Cloud CDN to accelerate content delivery. They notice that some users receive stale content even after purging the cache. Which THREE factors could cause this?
Explanation: Option B is correct because Cloud CDN invalidation (purge) is an asynchronous operation; if the invalidation request fails or is not fully propagated, edge caches continue serving the previously cached object, so users still see stale content. Option C is correct because Cloud CDN caches content at many Google edge locations (and possibly multiple cache tiers); an invalidation must be applied across all of them, and if some edge locations are not purged or have not yet processed the invalidation, those locations keep returning the stale response. Option E is correct because a long Cache-Control: max-age (or s-maxage) from the origin sets the object's freshness lifetime in the CDN; while Cloud CDN invalidation is designed to force eviction, if the origin's caching headers are not respected or the invalidation does not override the cached entry as expected, the CDN can continue serving the object until its max-age expires. Option A is not correct because gzip compression is just content encoding and does not by itself prevent or defeat cache invalidation. Option D is not correct because signed URLs only control access/authorization to the content; they do not cause stale content after a purge.
A company deploys a critical application on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and wants to ensure high availability during cluster upgrades. Which TWO practices should they follow?
Explanation: Option B is correct because spreading node pools across multiple zones within a regional cluster ensures that when one zone's nodes are drained during an upgrade, workloads can still run on nodes in other zones, maintaining availability. Option C is correct because PodDisruptionBudgets (PDBs) constrain voluntary disruptions such as node drains during upgrades, ensuring that only a specified number or percentage of pods (e.g., minAvailable or maxUnavailable) are taken down at once, preserving application capacity. Option A is not suitable because a single-zone node pool places all nodes in one zone, so an upgrade or zone failure can disrupt all replicas simultaneously. Option D is incorrect because cluster autoscaling adds or removes nodes based on resource demand, not to guarantee availability during upgrades, and it does not prevent disruptions. Option E is not among the marked answers; while regional clusters provide a multi-zone control plane, the question asks for practices ensuring high availability during upgrades, which are specifically addressed by multi-zone node pools and PDBs.
+15 more Ensure solution and operations reliability questions available
Practice all Ensure solution and operations reliability questions1. Baseline your knowledge
Start with 10 questions to gauge your current understanding of Ensure solution and operations reliability. This tells you whether you need a concept refresher or just practice.
2. Review every explanation
For each question — right or wrong — read the full explanation. Understanding why an answer is correct is more valuable than knowing the answer itself.
3. Focus on exam traps
Ensure solution and operations reliability questions on the PCA frequently use trap wording. Look for subtle differences in answers that test your precision, not just general knowledge.
4. Reach 80% consistently
Do repeated sessions until you score 80%+ three times in a row. Then move to mixed-mode practice to test cross-topic recall under realistic conditions.
The exact number varies per candidate. Ensure solution and operations reliability is tested as part of the Google Professional Cloud Architect blueprint. Practicing with targeted Ensure solution and operations reliability questions ensures you can handle any format or difficulty that appears.
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