PCDOE Practice Test 9 — 10 Questions

Question 1

Match each Google Cloud service to its primary purpose.

Accepted Answer

Cloud Build: Continuous integration/continuous delivery platform. The correct matches are: Cloud Build for CI/CD, Cloud Source Repositories for Git hosting, Cloud Functions for event-driven serverless functions, and Cloud Run for serverless containers. Common confusions include swapping the purposes of Cloud Build and Cloud Source Repositories.

Answer

Cloud Build: Private Git repository hosting

Answer

Cloud Source Repositories: Continuous integration/continuous delivery platform

Question 2

A company needs to monitor custom application metrics from Compute Engine instances. Which TWO methods can be used?

Accepted Answer

Install Cloud Monitoring agent on instances. The Cloud Monitoring agent is specifically designed to collect custom application metrics from Compute Engine instances and send them to Cloud Monitoring. It supports both third-party applications and custom metrics via its built-in integration with collectd and a configuration interface for defining custom metrics. This is the standard, supported method for monitoring custom metrics from VMs.

Answer

Use the deprecated Stackdriver Agent

Answer

Use Cloud Trace

Answer

Install Cloud Logging agent

Question 3

A team is setting up CI/CD for a microservices architecture. They want to ensure each service is independently buildable and deployable. What practices should they adopt? (Select THREE)

Accepted Answer

Use Artifact Registry with separate repositories per service. Option A is correct because Artifact Registry lets you create separate repositories per service, so each microservice's container images and packages are versioned and stored independently, which supports independent build and deploy workflows. Option C is correct because a single monorepo with separate Cloud Build triggers per service (using included files or path filters) allows each service to be built only when its own code changes, preserving independent buildability. Option D is correct because separate source repositories per service give each team full autonomy over its own codebase, release cadence, and pipeline, which is the clearest way to ensure services are independently buildable and deployable. Option B is not correct here because Cloud Deploy's multi-target pipeline is about promoting releases across environments (e.g., dev, staging, prod), not about making each service independently buildable. Option E is not correct because a single Cloud Build config with substitutions to build multiple services couples the services into one build definition, which undermines independent buildability and deployability.

Answer

Use Cloud Deploy's multi-target pipeline

Answer

Use Cloud Build's build config with substitutions to build multiple services

Question 4

Which TWO of the following are required steps to set up a shared VPC for DevOps teams?

Accepted Answer

Attach the service projects to the host project.. Option D is correct because setting up Shared VPC begins at the organization level by designating a host project and enabling Shared VPC on it, which makes that project the central network owner. Option A is correct because after the host project is enabled, the DevOps service projects must be attached to the host project so their resources can use the host project's subnets. Option B is wrong because Shared VPC does not use VPC peering; the service projects consume subnets from the host project's VPC rather than creating their own peered VPC. Option C is wrong because Cloud Interconnect is a dedicated hybrid connectivity service to on-premises networks, not a mechanism for linking host and service projects. Option E is wrong because the Shared VPC Admin role (roles/compute.xpnAdmin) is granted to the administrators who manage Shared VPC at the host or organization level, not to the service project team, which typically receives roles such as Compute Network User on specific subnets.

Answer

Create a new VPC in the service project and peer it with the host project.

Answer

Configure Cloud Interconnect between the host and service projects.

Answer

Grant the Shared VPC Admin role (roles/compute.xpnAdmin) to the service project team.

Question 5

Refer to the exhibit. A team uses this cloudbuild.yaml to deploy a service to Cloud Run. They notice that the deployment fails intermittently with a 'permission denied' error. Which is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The Cloud Build service account does not have the `roles/run.admin` or `roles/run.developer` role. The Cloud Build service account (default or custom) must have the `roles/run.admin` or `roles/run.developer` IAM role to execute `gcloud run deploy`. Without these roles, the deployment fails with a 'permission denied' error because the service account lacks the `run.services.create` and `run.services.update` permissions required to deploy or update a Cloud Run service. The intermittent nature suggests the service account may have been granted the role after some failures, or the error only surfaces when the service account's cached credentials expire.

Answer

The image tag $SHORT_SHA is invalid because it contains a variable

Answer

The region in the gcloud run deploy command does not match the region where Cloud Run is enabled

Answer

The Cloud Build service account does not have permission to push images to Artifact Registry

Question 6

A team uses a monorepo with multiple microservices in separate directories. They want to build only the changed service(s) when a push occurs to the repo. How can they achieve this efficiently?

Accepted Answer

Create multiple Cloud Build triggers, each with a different includeFiles filter matching the service directory.. Cloud Build triggers can be configured with includeFiles filters to trigger only when files in a specific directory change, allowing each microservice to build independently. Option A builds all services, which is inefficient for a monorepo with multiple microservices. Option B uses Cloud Functions to invoke Cloud Build, adding unnecessary complexity and overhead. Option D relies on dynamic detection with git diff, which is not a built-in feature of Cloud Build triggers and would require custom scripting.

Answer

Use a single Cloud Build trigger with a Dockerfile build step that builds all services.

Answer

Use Cloud Functions to invoke Cloud Build per changed directory.

Answer

Use a Cloud Build trigger with a build config that dynamically detects changes using git diff.

Question 7

A company uses Cloud Storage to store archival data. They want to minimize storage costs while maintaining availability. Which storage class should they use?

Accepted Answer

Archive storage class.. The Archive storage class is the correct choice because it offers the lowest storage cost for archival data that is accessed less than once per year, with a 365-day minimum storage duration and retrieval costs that are higher than other classes. This aligns with the requirement to minimize storage costs while maintaining availability, as Archive data is still available for retrieval (though with a longer latency) and is replicated for durability.

Answer

Nearline storage class.

Answer

Standard storage class.

Answer

Coldline storage class.

Question 8

A company uses BigQuery for analytics. They notice high costs due to queries scanning large amounts of data. They want to reduce costs without sacrificing performance for urgent queries. Which approach is most cost-effective?

Accepted Answer

Partition and cluster tables, and use BI Engine for acceleration. Partitioning and clustering tables reduces the amount of data scanned by queries, and BI Engine provides an in-memory acceleration layer for fast, interactive queries. Together, they reduce costs by minimizing bytes processed while maintaining performance for urgent queries.

Answer

Use flat-rate pricing with reservations

Answer

Use on-demand pricing with query caching

Answer

Use materialized views and limit query jobs to interactive priority

Question 9

What is the primary benefit of using preemptible VMs?

Accepted Answer

Lower cost.. Preemptible VMs are Compute Engine instances that last a maximum of 24 hours and can be terminated at any time by Google. They offer a significantly lower price—up to 60-91% discount compared to standard VMs—making them ideal for batch jobs and fault-tolerant workloads where cost savings are the primary benefit.

Answer

Higher reliability.

Answer

Faster performance.

Answer

Better security.

Question 10

A team wants to monitor a Google Cloud Run service for application crashes. Which Google Cloud tool automatically captures and notifies on application errors?

Accepted Answer

Error Reporting. Error Reporting (D) is the correct answer because it is a Google Cloud service specifically designed to automatically capture, aggregate, and notify on application errors, including crashes in Cloud Run services. It ingests error events from Cloud Logging and provides real-time alerts and dashboards, making it the dedicated tool for this use case.

Answer

Cloud Logging

Answer

Cloud Monitoring

Answer

Cloud Console