PCDOE Optimizing performance and cost Practice Test 2 — 15 Questions

Question 1

Arrange the steps to troubleshoot a high latency issue on a Google Cloud HTTP(S) Load Balancer.

Accepted Answer

Check health checks, then review load balancer logs, then analyze metrics, then identify the problematic backend, then take corrective action.. Start with health checks, then logs, metrics, identify culprit, and take action.

Answer

Analyze metrics, then review logs, then check health checks, then identify the problematic backend, then take corrective action.

Answer

Check health checks, then identify the problematic backend from logs, then take corrective action, then analyze metrics, then verify.

Answer

Review logs, then analyze metrics, then identify the problematic backend, then take corrective action.

Question 2

Order the steps to respond to a Google Cloud security incident involving a compromised service account key.

Accepted Answer

Revoke key, then rotate key, then audit logs, then assess impact, then update policies.. The correct order for responding to a compromised service account key is: first revoke the key to stop unauthorized use, then rotate (reissue) a new key to restore legitimate access, then audit logs to understand the scope, then assess the impact on resources, and finally update security policies to prevent future incidents. This sequence balances containment, recovery, investigation, and improvement.

Answer

Audit logs, then revoke key, then rotate key, then assess impact, then update policies.

Answer

Rotate key, then revoke key, then audit logs, then assess impact, then update policies.

Answer

Revoke key, then audit logs, then rotate key, then assess impact, then update policies.

Question 3

Match each SRE term to its description.

Accepted Answer

SLI: A carefully defined quantitative measure of some aspect of the level of service.. The correct matches are: SLI with a quantitative measure, SLO with a target value, SLA with a contract including consequences, and Error Budget with remaining unreliability. Common confusions include swapping Error Budget with SLI or confusing SLO with SLA.

Answer

SLI: The acceptable amount of unreliability remaining before the SLO is violated.

Answer

SLO: A contract with users that includes consequences.

Question 4

Match each cost optimization practice to its description.

Accepted Answer

Committed Use Discounts: Discounts for committing to use a certain amount of resources for 1 or 3 years.. Common cost management techniques on Google Cloud include Committed Use Discounts (long-term commitment savings), Preemptible VMs (short-lived cheaper instances), Sustained Use Discounts (automatic monthly usage discounts), and Custom Machine Types (tailored VMs). The distractors swap definitions between related practices.

Answer

Committed Use Discounts: Short-lived, lower-cost instances that can be terminated at any time.

Answer

Preemptible VMs: Discounts for committing to use a certain amount of resources for 1 or 3 years.

Question 5

A company uses Compute Engine with committed use discounts for 1-year. They need to reduce costs further. What should they do?

Accepted Answer

Rightsize their VMs based on recommender recommendations.. Rightsizing based on recommender recommendations reduces resource usage without changing pricing model, offering immediate cost savings.

Answer

Use sustained use discounts instead.

Answer

Use preemptible VMs for all workloads.

Answer

Increase committed use discount term to 3 years.

Question 6

A team wants to receive a notification when their monthly spending exceeds 80% of the budget. Which GCP feature should they configure?

Accepted Answer

Budget alert with threshold rule at 0.8.. Budget alerts with threshold rules trigger notifications when spending reaches specified percentages, such as 80%.

Answer

Committed use discounts.

Answer

Cloud Storage bucket for cost exports.

Answer

Cloud Monitoring cost insights dashboard.

Question 7

A company uses BigQuery for analytics with many queries scanning terabytes daily. They need to reduce query costs without reducing usage. What is the most effective strategy?

Accepted Answer

Partition and cluster tables.. Partitioning and clustering tables reduce the amount of data scanned per query, directly lowering costs.

Answer

Reserve capacity in specific regions.

Answer

Use flat-rate pricing with slots.

Answer

Use standard SQL instead of legacy SQL.

Question 8

A DevOps engineer notices that the monthly compute cost is higher than expected for a Kubernetes Engine cluster. They want to identify which namespaces or workloads are contributing most to the cost. What should they do?

Accepted Answer

Enable GKE Usage Metering and export to BigQuery.. GKE Usage Metering exports detailed per-cluster resource consumption data (CPU, memory, storage, and network) to BigQuery, enabling cost attribution by namespace, label, or workload. This is the only option that directly provides granular cost breakdowns for Kubernetes resources, allowing the engineer to identify which namespaces or workloads drive compute costs.

Answer

Enable Logging for all containers and analyze logs.

Answer

Use Cloud Monitoring dashboards with Kubernetes metrics.

Answer

Add labels to nodes and use Cost Table reports.

Question 9

A company uses Cloud Storage with standard storage class for all data. They want to automatically move data that has been accessed more than 30 days ago to a lower-cost storage class, and after 90 days to archive. What should they configure?

Accepted Answer

Lifecycle management rules.. Lifecycle management rules can automatically transition objects to different storage classes based on age or last access time.

Answer

Bucket lock.

Answer

Retention policy.

Answer

Object versioning.

Question 10

Which GCP tool provides recommendations for rightsizing Compute Engine VMs?

Accepted Answer

Recommender.. The Recommender tool in GCP uses machine learning to analyze historical usage patterns and provides actionable recommendations, including rightsizing suggestions for Compute Engine VMs. It identifies underutilized VMs and suggests optimal machine types to reduce costs without compromising performance, making it the correct choice for this task.

Answer

Cloud Console Cost Table.

Answer

Cloud Monitoring.

Answer

Cloud Billing Reports.

Question 11

A company has multiple projects under an organization. They want to allocate costs to different departments based on project labels. They have applied labels to all resources, but the cost reports show 'Unlabeled' for many resources. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

Labels were applied after the billing period.. Labels applied after the billing period do not apply to historical data; they only appear in future billing reports.

Answer

Labels are not propagated to billing export.

Answer

The billing export is not configured.

Answer

The project uses a different billing account.

Question 12

A team uses Cloud SQL for MySQL. They have read-heavy traffic and want to reduce costs. Which strategy is most effective?

Accepted Answer

Use read replicas to offload read queries.. Using read replicas offloads read queries from the primary instance, allowing the primary to be downsized or use a lower-tier instance, reducing cost.

Answer

Use committed use discounts.

Answer

Use High Availability with a standby instance.

Answer

Use vertical scaling to increase instance size.

Question 13

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 14

Which THREE actions can help optimize Cloud Storage costs? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

Use Nearline or Coldline storage classes for infrequently accessed data.. Nearline and Coldline storage classes are designed for infrequently accessed data, offering lower storage costs compared to Standard storage. By choosing these classes for data that is accessed less than once a quarter or once a year, you reduce the per-GB storage charge, though you incur higher retrieval and early deletion fees. This directly optimizes costs when access patterns align with the class's intended use.

Answer

Enable versioning on all buckets to protect against accidental deletion.

Answer

Use Standard storage class for all objects to ensure low latency.

Question 15

A company uses BigQuery on-demand pricing. They want to reduce costs without changing usage patterns. Which THREE strategies are effective? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

Use clustered tables.. Partitioning and clustering reduce data scanned per query. Materialized views precompute results to reduce scanned data on repeated queries.

Answer

Use legacy SQL instead of standard SQL.

Answer

Use flat-rate pricing.