PCDE Practice Test 8 — 10 Questions

Question 1

A DevOps engineer wants to automatically trigger a Cloud Build pipeline whenever a pull request is created against the main branch of a repository. Which type of build trigger should they use?

Accepted Answer

Pull request trigger. A pull request trigger in Cloud Build is specifically designed to initiate a build when a pull request is created or updated against a target branch, such as main. This trigger type evaluates the PR event and automatically runs the pipeline, enabling validation of proposed changes before merging.

Answer

Push to branch trigger

Answer

Scheduled trigger

Answer

Manual trigger

Question 2

A company uses Terraform with remote state stored in GCS. They want to prevent concurrent `terraform apply` runs for the same configuration to avoid state corruption. Which feature should they use?

Accepted Answer

State locking is automatically enabled when using a GCS backend; no additional configuration is needed.. The GCS backend for Terraform automatically supports state locking without any additional configuration. When Terraform performs operations that could modify state (like apply or destroy), it creates a lock object in the same GCS bucket to prevent concurrent modifications. This is built into the backend implementation, so no flags or bucket settings are required. Therefore, option D is correct.

Answer

Set the `-lock` flag to `true` in the Terraform CLI command.

Answer

Enable state locking in the GCS bucket by setting `force_destroy = false`.

Answer

Use Terraform workspaces to isolate runs.

Question 3

Refer to the exhibit. A company has a Cloud Spanner instance with the backup configuration shown. They need to improve disaster recovery. Which THREE strategies should they implement?

Accepted Answer

Enable point-in-time recovery (PITR). Option B is correct because enabling point-in-time recovery (PITR) on the Cloud Spanner instance lets the company restore the database to any timestamp within the configurable retention window (up to 7 days), which directly strengthens disaster recovery against accidental data corruption or deletion. Option C is correct because using a multi-region instance configuration replicates data synchronously across multiple regions with a 99.999% SLA, providing resilience if an entire region becomes unavailable. Option D is correct because configuring cross-region backups stores backup copies in a different region than the source instance, protecting recovery data even if the instance's home region is lost. Option A is not the best fit because exports to Cloud Storage are manual or scheduled logical dumps that are not automatically managed as Spanner backups and have slower, less granular restore capabilities. Option E is not correct because read replicas in another region improve read latency and read availability but do not by themselves provide a recovery mechanism for restoring lost or corrupted data.

Answer

Schedule regular exports to Cloud Storage

Answer

Use read replicas in another region

Question 4

Refer to the exhibit. The company wants to achieve a 99.99% SLA for this Cloud SQL instance. What should they do?

Accepted Answer

Change the availability type to REGIONAL.. A 99.99% SLA for Cloud SQL requires a regional (multi-zone) configuration to protect against a zonal failure. By changing the availability type to REGIONAL, the instance is provisioned with a synchronous standby in a different zone, enabling automatic failover and meeting the 99.99% uptime target. The default zonal availability only provides a 99.95% SLA.

Answer

Change to a different tier.

Answer

Enable automatic backups.

Answer

Increase the number of CPUs.

Question 5

A BI team is designing a BigQuery table for a sales dashboard that queries daily sales by product category and region. The dashboard often filters on a specific date range and a specific region. Which combination of partitioning and clustering should be used?

Accepted Answer

Partition by date, cluster by region. Partitioning by date (e.g., on a DATE or TIMESTAMP column) allows BigQuery to prune entire partitions when the dashboard filters on a specific date range, reducing the amount of data scanned. Clustering by region then sorts the data within each partition by region, enabling efficient block-level pruning when the dashboard filters on a specific region. This combination optimizes both the date range and region filters, which are the most common query patterns for this sales dashboard.

Answer

Partition by region, cluster by date

Answer

Use only clustering on date and region without partitioning

Answer

Partition by month, cluster by date

Question 6

A data engineering team ingests JSON logs into BigQuery using a streaming pipeline. Queries need to extract specific fields from nested arrays. Which SQL construct should be used to efficiently transform the nested data into a flat table for BI?

Accepted Answer

UNNEST with CROSS JOIN. `UNNEST` with `CROSS JOIN` is the standard SQL construct in BigQuery to flatten nested arrays (repeated fields) into a flat table. When JSON logs contain arrays of structs, `CROSS JOIN UNNEST(array_column)` expands each array element into its own row, allowing BI tools to access individual fields directly. This is the most efficient and idiomatic way to transform nested data into a relational format for querying.

Answer

ARRAY_AGG with STRUCT

Answer

STRUCT with nested field access

Answer

SELECT * EXCEPT with UNNEST

Question 7

A company is migrating an on-premises PostgreSQL database to Cloud SQL. The database is 2 TB and must have minimal downtime during migration. Which migration strategy should the Database Engineer recommend?

Accepted Answer

Use Database Migration Service to set up continuous replication from the on-premises database to Cloud SQL, then perform a minimal-downtime cutover.. The Database Migration Service (DMS) supports continuous replication from an on-premises PostgreSQL database to Cloud SQL using logical replication (pglogical or native PostgreSQL logical replication). This allows the source database to remain operational during the migration, and the cutover to Cloud SQL can be performed with minimal downtime, typically seconds to minutes, meeting the 2 TB size and low-downtime requirements.

Answer

Export the database using pg_dump and import into Cloud SQL using pg_restore during a maintenance window.

Answer

Set up PostgreSQL on Compute Engine and replicate data, then switch over to Cloud SQL.

Answer

Use Cloud SQL's built-in replication feature to connect directly to the on-premises database.

Question 8

An organization uses Artifact Registry to store Docker images. They want to enforce that only images that have passed vulnerability scanning and are signed can be deployed to GKE. Which two services should they use together?

Accepted Answer

Binary Authorization and Container Scanning API. Binary Authorization enforces that only signed and verified container images can be deployed to GKE, while the Container Scanning API (now part of Artifact Analysis) performs vulnerability scanning on images stored in Artifact Registry. Together, they ensure that only images that have passed vulnerability scanning and are cryptographically signed can be deployed, meeting the organization's requirements.

Answer

Cloud Deploy and Cloud Run

Answer

Cloud Build and Artifact Registry

Answer

Security Command Center and Cloud Asset Inventory

Question 9

A company is using Cloud SQL and wants to automatically increase storage when disk usage reaches a threshold. What should they configure?

Accepted Answer

Enable 'auto-storage increase' in the instance settings.. Cloud SQL provides a built-in 'auto-storage increase' setting that, when enabled, automatically increases the instance's storage capacity when disk usage reaches a predefined threshold (typically 90% or when free space drops below a certain amount). This eliminates the need for manual intervention or custom automation, ensuring high availability and preventing out-of-disk errors.

Answer

Use Active Assist recommendations to manually resize.

Answer

Set up a Cloud Monitoring alert to manually increase storage when usage exceeds 80%.

Answer

Configure a Cloud Function to resize the disk via API when threshold is reached.

Question 10

An organization wants to set up a landing zone with separate projects for development, staging, and production environments. They also need a shared VPC for networking and a centralized logging project. Which folder structure aligns with Google Cloud best practices?

Accepted Answer

Create folders: /environments/dev, /environments/staging, /environments/prod, and /common. Place networking and logging projects in /common.. It follows Google Cloud best practices by separating environments (dev, staging, prod) into their own folder under an /environments parent, and placing shared resources like networking and logging into a /common folder. This structure enables consistent IAM policy inheritance, resource isolation, and centralized management of shared services, which is critical for a landing zone in a DevOps pipeline.

Answer

Create a single folder /landing-zone and put all projects there.

Answer

Create folders: /dev, /staging, /prod. Place all projects directly under the root.

Answer

Create folders: /prod, /non-prod, /shared. Put dev and staging in /non-prod.