PCD Practice Test 32 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company has a multi-module repository. They want to build only the modules that have changes. Which two features can they combine to achieve this? (Choose 2)

Accepted Answer

Build scripts that detect changes. Option B (Build scripts that detect changes) is correct because a custom build script can inspect the Git diff or commit history (e.g., using git diff --name-only against the previous commit) to determine which module directories were modified and then conditionally invoke the build only for those modules. Option D (Cloud Build triggers with filepath filters) is correct because Cloud Build triggers support an includedFiles (or ignoredFiles) filter that uses glob patterns to fire a build only when files matching specific module paths change, so each module can have its own trigger scoped to its directory. Together, the filepath-filtered trigger ensures the build only starts when relevant files change, and the change-detection script further narrows the actual build steps to the affected modules. Option A (Cloud Build queue) is not correct because the queue only manages concurrent build execution and ordering, not selective module building. Option C (Cloud Build substitutions) is not correct because substitutions merely inject variable values into build configs and cannot by themselves detect which modules changed. Option E (Cloud Source Repositories mirror) is not correct because mirroring synchronizes repositories and does not provide change detection or conditional build logic.

Answer

Cloud Build queue

Answer

Cloud Build substitutions

Answer

Cloud Source Repositories mirror

Question 2

An organization is migrating a critical application to Google Cloud and needs to ensure high availability and disaster recovery. The application runs on Compute Engine and uses a stateful database. Which three design choices should they make? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

Use managed instance groups distributed across multiple zones.. Managed instance groups (MIGs) distributed across multiple zones provide automatic failover and self-healing for the Compute Engine instances. If a zone fails, the MIG automatically recreates instances in healthy zones, ensuring high availability for the application layer. This aligns with Google Cloud's best practices for regional resilience.

Answer

Use preemptible VMs to reduce costs for the database layer.

Answer

Deploy all instances in a single zone and use snapshots for backup.

Question 3

A company is deploying a microservices architecture on GKE. They need to expose a set of related microservices under a single external IP address with path-based routing. Which Kubernetes resource should they use?

Accepted Answer

Ingress resource. An Ingress resource is the correct choice because it provides HTTP/HTTPS layer-7 routing to expose multiple services under a single external IP address, using path-based or host-based rules. This directly meets the requirement of exposing a set of related microservices with path-based routing on GKE, whereas a Service of type LoadBalancer would create a separate external IP per service.

Answer

Service of type NodePort

Answer

NetworkPolicy

Answer

Service of type LoadBalancer

Question 4

A Cloud Spanner instance has been running with 2 nodes. The team wants to migrate to processing units for more granular scaling. What is the equivalent number of processing units for 2 nodes?

Accepted Answer

2000 processing units. In Cloud Spanner, 1 node equals 1000 processing units. Therefore, 2 nodes equal 2000 processing units. This conversion is standard, though the documentation may vary slightly (some sources say 1 node = 1000 PUs). 500 PUs would be half a node, and 4000 would be 4 nodes.

Answer

1000 processing units

Answer

4000 processing units

Answer

500 processing units

Question 5

A team is migrating a Teradata data warehouse to BigQuery. They need to assess the migration complexity. Which TWO factors are most critical in determining the level of effort for SQL translation?

Accepted Answer

Volume of BTEQ scripts and stored procedures that must be rewritten.. Option A is correct because BTEQ scripts and stored procedures contain procedural logic (loops, conditionals, error handling) that has no direct BigQuery equivalent and must be manually re-engineered into scripting or orchestration tools, making their volume a primary driver of translation effort. Option B is correct because Teradata-specific constructs such as QUALIFY, MACROS, and SET tables require semantic rewrites — QUALIFY must be emulated with window functions plus a subquery, MACROS must become stored procedures or UDFs, and SET tables must be converted to DISTINCT or MERGE logic — so their prevalence directly raises complexity. Option C is not a SQL translation factor; user count and concurrency affect slot capacity, pricing, and performance tuning, not the effort to convert SQL dialects. Option D is also unrelated to translation complexity, since table and row counts influence data transfer and storage sizing rather than the difficulty of rewriting SQL. Option E concerns network throughput for data movement, which affects transfer time and tooling (e.g., Storage Transfer Service or BigQuery Data Transfer Service) but not the SQL translation workload.

Answer

Number of users and concurrent queries.

Answer

Number of tables and rows in the database.

Answer

Availability of network bandwidth between on-premises and GCP.

Question 6

A developer is building a Cloud Function that processes Pub/Sub messages. They want to run the function locally with simulated events before deployment. Which tool should they use?

Accepted Answer

Functions Framework. The Functions Framework is the correct tool because it provides a local development server that emulates the Cloud Functions runtime environment, allowing developers to invoke functions with simulated Pub/Sub events via HTTP requests. This enables testing and debugging of event-driven logic before deploying to production, without requiring actual Google Cloud infrastructure.

Answer

Cloud Scheduler

Answer

Cloud Build

Answer

Cloud Shell

Question 7

Which TWO statements are true about Cloud Functions? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Cloud Functions automatically scale based on the number of incoming events. Cloud Functions automatically scale horizontally based on the number of incoming events, such as HTTP requests or Pub/Sub messages. The platform handles this scaling transparently, spinning up new function instances as needed to handle concurrent invocations, and scaling down to zero when idle. This is a key serverless characteristic that eliminates the need for manual capacity planning.

Answer

Cloud Functions require you to provide a container image from Container Registry

Answer

Cloud Functions can only be triggered by HTTP requests

Answer

Cloud Functions have a maximum execution timeout of 9 minutes for all runtimes

Question 8

An organization is migrating a large Oracle database to Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL using Ora2Pg. They have complex PL/SQL packages with overloaded procedures. What is the correct approach to handle these packages in PostgreSQL?

Accepted Answer

Convert each Oracle package to a PostgreSQL schema containing the procedures and functions as individual objects.. PostgreSQL does not have packages. The recommended approach is to map each Oracle package to a separate schema containing the package's procedures and functions as top-level objects. Overloaded procedures can be handled by creating separate functions with different names or using default parameters. Ora2Pg can automate much of the conversion but manual review is needed.

Answer

Convert each package to a single PostgreSQL function containing all logic, using conditional logic to mimic overloaded procedures.

Answer

Keep the packages as is; PostgreSQL supports packages natively.

Answer

Use Oracle compatibility mode in PostgreSQL to enable package support.

Question 9

A team is migrating an Oracle database to Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL. They are using Ora2Pg for schema conversion. Which of the following data type mappings is correct?

Accepted Answer

VARCHAR2 → VARCHAR. The correct mapping is VARCHAR2 to VARCHAR. In Oracle, VARCHAR2 is a variable-length character string, and in PostgreSQL, the equivalent is VARCHAR (or TEXT). This mapping preserves the character data type and is standard in Ora2Pg conversions.

Answer

RAW → TEXT

Answer

CLOB → BYTEA

Answer

NUMBER → INTEGER

Question 10

A financial services company runs a critical transaction processing system on Compute Engine. The system uses a regional managed instance group (MIG) with autohealing and autoscaling. They need to ensure that the application remains available even if an entire zone fails, and that recovery is automatic. They also want to minimize downtime during planned maintenance. What should they do?

Accepted Answer

Deploy the application across multiple zones using a regional MIG with autohealing, and use a global load balancer with health checks to route traffic only to healthy instances.. A regional MIG spreads instances across multiple zones, so a zone outage only impacts a fraction of capacity. Autohealing replaces unhealthy instances, and a global load balancer with health checks routes traffic to healthy instances. This design provides automatic recovery from zone failures and reduces downtime during maintenance by allowing rolling updates without service interruption.

Answer

Configure the MIG to span multiple zones within the region, and set the instance template to use a regional persistent disk for data.

Answer

Configure the MIG to use a stateful configuration with persistent disks, and set the update policy to opportunistic.

Answer

Use a zonal MIG and manually create a second MIG in another zone, then use DNS failover to switch traffic.

Question 11

A company runs a stateless API on Cloud Run that receives a steady stream of requests. They want to minimize cold starts and ensure predictable latency during traffic spikes. The service is containerized and uses a small image. Which configuration should they choose?

Accepted Answer

Set the minimum number of instances to a value greater than zero and enable CPU always allocated.. To minimize cold starts, you must keep instances warm by setting a minimum instance count greater than zero. Additionally, enabling CPU always allocated ensures that the instance has CPU available even when idle, which is required for background work and reduces latency. The other options either do not prevent cold starts or may worsen performance.

Answer

Increase the maximum number of instances and set the concurrency to 1.

Answer

Use a larger container image with more dependencies to reduce startup time.

Answer

Deploy the service with a higher memory limit and set the timeout to 15 minutes.

Question 12

A logistics company runs a shipment tracking application on GKE. The application consists of microservices that communicate via gRPC. They need to ensure that if one microservice becomes slow or unresponsive, it does not cause cascading failures. They also want to limit the number of concurrent requests to each service and automatically retry failed requests with backoff. What should they do?

Accepted Answer

Use Istio service mesh with Envoy sidecar proxies to enforce circuit breaking, retries, timeouts, and connection pool limits.. Istio service mesh with Envoy sidecars provides centralized traffic management, including circuit breaking, retries with backoff, timeouts, and connection pool limits. These features prevent a slow or unresponsive microservice from causing cascading failures by limiting concurrent requests and isolating failures. This is more consistent and manageable than client-side configurations.

Answer

Deploy the microservices on separate GKE clusters and use a global load balancer to distribute traffic.

Answer

Configure Kubernetes Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA) and Pod Disruption Budgets (PDBs) for each microservice.

Answer

Implement client-side load balancing with gRPC and configure retries and timeouts in each client.

Question 13

A financial services company is deploying a stateful application on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) that requires each pod to have a stable network identity and persistent storage that survives pod rescheduling. The application also needs to scale horizontally. Which Kubernetes resource should they use to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

StatefulSet with a headless Service. StatefulSets are designed for stateful applications, providing stable pod identities, ordered deployment and scaling, and persistent storage through PersistentVolumeClaims. A headless Service gives each pod a unique DNS name, enabling stable network identity. Together, they satisfy the requirements for stable identity, persistent storage, and horizontal scaling.

Answer

DaemonSet with hostPath volumes

Answer

Deployment with a PersistentVolumeClaim

Answer

ReplicaSet with a ClusterIP Service

Question 14

A financial services team runs a Spring Boot service on Cloud Run that must call an external payment API. The external API enforces a strict rate limit and occasionally returns HTTP 503 during maintenance windows. The team wants the Cloud Run service to remain responsive and avoid cascading failures when the dependency degrades. What should they do?

Accepted Answer

Implement retries with exponential backoff and jitter, a circuit breaker around the external call, and a bounded thread or connection pool.. Resilience against a flaky dependency comes from combining bounded resources with failure isolation. Exponential backoff with jitter absorbs transient 503 responses, a circuit breaker stops traffic once failures cross a threshold so the service fails fast, and a bounded connection or thread pool ensures a slow dependency cannot consume all instance capacity. Together these keep the Cloud Run service responsive and prevent failures from propagating to upstream callers.

Answer

Configure Cloud Run request timeout to 1 second and let failed requests return 500 to the caller immediately.

Answer

Move the external API calls into a Cloud Tasks queue and return 202 Accepted to the caller immediately for every request.

Answer

Increase the Cloud Run concurrency setting to the maximum so more requests are handled in parallel while the dependency is slow.

Question 15

A startup is deploying a stateless web front end on Compute Engine. They expect traffic to vary significantly throughout the day and want the deployment to automatically add and remove VM instances based on demand, while ensuring that instances are replaced automatically if they fail a health check. Which Compute Engine feature should they use?

Accepted Answer

A managed instance group with an autoscaler and an HTTP(S) health check.. A managed instance group with an autoscaler and an HTTP(S) health check provides both horizontal scaling based on demand and automatic replacement of unhealthy instances. It is the standard Compute Engine pattern for stateless, variable-traffic workloads. Fixed-size groups, single instances, and preemptible VMs either lack scaling, lack reliability, or both.

Answer

A managed instance group with a fixed size of ten instances and no autoscaler.

Answer

A zonal managed instance group with preemptible VMs and a network load balancer.

Answer

A single Compute Engine instance with a startup script that monitors CPU and restarts the instance when utilization is high.