PCD Practice Test 10 — 10 Questions

Question 1

A company is migrating a 2 TB Oracle database to AlloyDB for PostgreSQL using Oracle to PostgreSQL migration tool (Ora2Pg). The migration must have minimal downtime. The team plans to use a two-phase approach: first a full dump, then incremental CDC. However, Ora2Pg does not natively support CDC. How should they achieve near-zero downtime migration?

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

Accepted Answer

Use Database Migration Service (DMS) with Oracle as source and AlloyDB as destination. Database Migration Service (DMS) supports continuous change data capture (CDC) from Oracle to AlloyDB for PostgreSQL, enabling near-zero downtime migration. Unlike Ora2Pg, which only handles full dump and restore, DMS uses Oracle LogMiner or binary logs to capture incremental changes and apply them to AlloyDB in near real-time, making it the correct choice for a two-phase migration with minimal downtime.

Answer

Use Dataflow to stream Oracle changes from Pub/Sub to AlloyDB

Answer

Use Ora2Pg for the full dump, then manually capture Oracle redo logs and apply them to AlloyDB

Answer

Export Oracle data to CSV, load into AlloyDB, then use a custom script with cron to apply changes

Question 2

A developer wants to deploy a containerized application to Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and ensure that new pods are automatically created if an existing pod fails. Which Kubernetes resource should be used?

Accepted Answer

Deployment. A Deployment is the correct Kubernetes resource for ensuring declarative updates and self-healing for stateless applications. It manages a ReplicaSet, which maintains the desired number of pod replicas; if a pod fails, the ReplicaSet controller automatically creates a replacement pod to match the desired state.

Answer

Job

Answer

DaemonSet

Answer

StatefulSet

Question 3

A developer is integrating a legacy on-premises application with Cloud Storage. The application generates files that must be uploaded to a bucket. The developer cannot install any additional software on the on-premises server. Which approach should the developer use?

Accepted Answer

Generate a signed URL and use an HTTP PUT request from the application.. A signed URL allows the application to upload files directly via HTTP PUT without requiring any additional software installation on the on-premises server. The developer only needs to generate a signed URL (using Cloud Storage client libraries or gcloud CLI on another system) and then make a simple HTTP request from the application. Option A is wrong because the gcloud CLI would need to be installed on the server, which violates the constraint. Option C is wrong because Cloud Storage FUSE requires installing a FUSE driver on the server. Option D is wrong because deploying a Cloud Function introduces extra complexity and still requires the application to send requests to the function, which would need additional logic.

Answer

Use the gcloud CLI to copy files to the bucket.

Answer

Mount the bucket using Cloud Storage FUSE.

Answer

Deploy a Cloud Function that accepts file uploads and writes to the bucket.

Question 4

A developer wants to enable IAM database authentication for Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL. Which IAM role must be granted to a user or service account to allow login?

Accepted Answer

Cloud SQL Instance User. Cloud SQL IAM database authentication for PostgreSQL requires the Cloud SQL Instance User role (roles/cloudsql.instanceUser) to be granted to a user or service account. This role allows the principal to log in to the database instance using IAM credentials, while the Cloud SQL Admin, Connect, and Client roles do not grant the specific login privilege needed for IAM-based database authentication.

Answer

Cloud SQL Admin

Answer

Cloud SQL Connect

Answer

Cloud SQL Client

Question 5

A company is using Cloud Run for a stateless API. They want to ensure that the service can handle sudden traffic spikes. Which two features should they configure?

Accepted Answer

Enable container concurrency.. Enabling container concurrency allows a single Cloud Run container instance to handle multiple requests simultaneously, up to the configured concurrency limit (default 80, max 1000). This improves throughput and resource utilization during traffic spikes without requiring additional instances. Option D is correct because setting max instances to a high value ensures the service can scale out to handle sudden load by creating more container instances, up to the configured maximum, preventing cold starts and request queuing.

Answer

Use Cloud Load Balancing.

Answer

Enable CPU always on allocation.

Answer

Set min instances to zero to save cost.

Question 6

Refer to the exhibit. A Cloud Run service is unable to connect to a Cloud SQL instance. The log entry shows the following. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The Cloud Run service account lacks the Cloud SQL Client role.. The Cloud Run service needs the Cloud SQL Client role (roles/cloudsql.client) on its service account to authorize connections to Cloud SQL. Without this IAM permission, the connection attempt is denied, resulting in the 'unable to connect' error shown in the log. This is the most common cause of connectivity failures between Cloud Run and Cloud SQL.

Answer

The database user credentials are incorrect.

Answer

The Cloud SQL instance is in a different region than the Cloud Run service.

Answer

The Cloud SQL instance has a public IP assigned.

Question 7

Which TWO are best practices for reducing the cost of Cloud Logging for a high-traffic application?

Accepted Answer

Use exclusion filters to drop debug logs.. Exclusion filters in Cloud Logging allow you to drop specific log entries (e.g., debug-level logs) before they are ingested, which directly reduces the volume of logs billed. Since Cloud Logging charges based on the amount of data ingested, excluding high-volume, low-value logs like debug messages is a primary cost-saving measure.

Answer

Route all logs to BigQuery for long-term storage.

Answer

Use log sinks to export logs to Cloud Storage and delete from Logging.

Answer

Disable default logs for all services.

Question 8

A developer needs to build a CI/CD pipeline that automatically tests and deploys a Node.js application to Cloud Run whenever a pull request is merged to the main branch. Which Google Cloud service should be used to trigger the pipeline?

Accepted Answer

Cloud Build. Cloud Build is the correct service because it is Google Cloud's fully managed CI/CD platform that can automatically trigger pipeline executions in response to repository events, such as a pull request merge to the main branch. By configuring a Cloud Build trigger with a source repository (e.g., Cloud Source Repositories, GitHub, or Bitbucket), the developer can define build steps to test the Node.js application and deploy it to Cloud Run using the `gcloud run deploy` command or a dedicated builder. This makes Cloud Build the native and most direct choice for building, testing, and deploying to Cloud Run in a single automated pipeline.

Answer

Cloud Functions

Answer

Cloud Deploy

Answer

App Engine

Question 9

A developer is setting up a Cloud Build configuration file for a Node.js application. They want to ensure that build steps are executed only when changes are pushed to the 'main' branch. What is the correct approach?

Accepted Answer

Use a build trigger with a branch filter. Cloud Build triggers can be configured with a branch filter (e.g., `^main$`) that ensures builds are only initiated when changes are pushed to the specified branch. This is the native, declarative way to control build execution based on Git branch events, without requiring custom scripting or external scheduling.

Answer

Use a script in the build step to check the branch name

Answer

Use Cloud Scheduler to trigger builds based on time intervals

Answer

Use a condition in the build config file

Question 10

An organization is planning a re-architect migration of a monolithic Oracle database to a microservices architecture using Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL and Cloud Spanner. They need to split the schema into multiple databases while maintaining data consistency across services. Which approach should they use?

Accepted Answer

Use Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL for each service and implement sagas to handle distributed transactions.. For microservices, each service should own its database. To maintain consistency across services, they should implement compensating transactions (sagas) rather than distributed transactions. Cloud Spanner can be used if strong consistency is required across global scales, but for microservices, the pattern is to use eventual consistency with sagas.

Answer

Use a single Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL instance with different schemas per service.

Answer

Use BigQuery to store all data and query across services.

Answer

Use Cloud Spanner for all services to maintain ACID transactions across databases.