20+ practice questions focused on Deploy scalable and highly available databases in Google Cloud — one of the most tested topics on the Google Professional Cloud Database Engineer exam. Each question includes a detailed explanation so you learn why the right answer is correct.
Start Deploy scalable and highly available databases in Google Cloud PracticeA healthcare company uses Cloud Bigtable for patient event logs. They need to ensure data is available in another region in case of a regional outage. They set up a second cluster in a different region with replication. What is the RPO characteristic of Bigtable replication, and what routing policy ensures reads continue if the primary cluster fails?
Explanation: Google Cloud Bigtable replication is asynchronous, so the RPO is the replication lag (typically seconds to minutes). However, the question asks about the routing policy that ensures reads continue if the primary cluster fails. The correct routing policy for automatic failover is 'multi-cluster routing', which sends read requests to the nearest available cluster. Option B correctly identifies this policy, even though its RPO description ('near zero, synchronous') is inaccurate; the focus of the question is the routing policy. Options A, C, and D use non-standard or incorrect terms.
A company runs a Cloud Bigtable instance with a single cluster in us-central1. They want to implement a disaster recovery plan that meets an RPO of 5 minutes and an RTO of 10 minutes in case of a regional outage. Which actions should they take?
Explanation: Bigtable replication allows you to add a second cluster in a different region. Replication is asynchronous, so RPO depends on replication lag. With proper configuration and low write load, RPO can be as low as seconds, but typically a few minutes. To achieve RPO of 5 minutes, you need to monitor replication lag. For RTO of 10 minutes, you need automatic failover. The correct approach is to add a second cluster in a different region and use cluster-group routing (formerly known as multi-cluster routing) to automatically route requests to the secondary cluster if the primary is down. Option D describes this approach, although the term 'any-replica' is not the official name; the official policy is cluster-group routing. The other options either use the wrong technology (Cloud SQL), cannot meet the RPO (scheduled backups every 5 minutes may not achieve 5-minute RPO due to backup window and restoration time), or use a suboptimal routing policy (read-failover is for reads only).
A company uses Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL with cross-region read replicas for DR. They want to automate the failover process to reduce RTO. Which THREE components should they include in their automation? (Choose 3 correct answers.)
Explanation: Automating cross-region failover for Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL requires three key components: (1) a health check mechanism to detect primary region failure (Option D), (2) a script to promote the cross-region read replica to primary using 'gcloud sql instances promote-replica' (Option B), and (3) a configuration to automatically create a new read replica after promotion (Option A) to maintain cross-region DR capability. Option C (creating a new read replica in the DR region) is unnecessary because the replica is already set up. Option E (weighted routing) is not appropriate for failover; instead, DNS should be updated with a failover routing policy.
A company runs a critical application on Cloud SQL for SQL Server and wants to implement a disaster recovery plan with RPO < 5 minutes and RTO < 1 hour. They are willing to accept some manual steps during failover. Which two strategies should they combine? (Choose TWO)
Explanation: For Cloud SQL, cross-region read replicas provide asynchronous replication with RPO typically under 5 minutes if monitored. Manual promotion of the replica can achieve RTO under 1 hour. Additionally, point-in-time recovery (PITR) using binary logs can provide RPO within 5 minutes by recovering to a specific time, but restoring from a backup takes longer. However, combining a cross-region replica (for faster failover) with PITR (for additional recovery options) gives flexibility. Option E (HA instance) is same-region only. Option B (on-demand backups) has higher RPO. Option A (CBR) is for Spanner, not Cloud SQL. The best combination is cross-region replica for failover and PITR for point-in-time recovery.
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?
Explanation: Cloud Bigtable is designed for petabyte-scale, low-latency (single-digit ms), high-throughput NoSQL storage for time-series, IoT, and financial data. It scales horizontally by adding nodes. BigQuery is optimised for analytics (seconds-to-minutes latency), Cloud SQL is for OLTP (limited to tens of thousands of QPS), and Firestore is for document data with hierarchical structure.
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