PCDOE Managing Google Cloud costs Practice Test 3 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A startup wants to reduce their Google Cloud costs for a batch processing job that runs nightly for 3 hours. The job is fault-tolerant and can tolerate interruptions. What is the most cost-effective compute option?

Accepted Answer

Preemptible VM. Option C is correct because preemptible VMs offer up to 60-91% discount and are suitable for fault-tolerant batch jobs. Option A, Shielded VM, adds security features but not cost savings. Option B, Sole-tenant node, is for isolation and costs more. Option D, Standard VM, is more expensive than preemptible.

Answer

Standard VM

Answer

Shielded VM

Answer

Sole-tenant node

Question 2

A company has multiple projects in an organization. They want to set a budget of $5000 per month on a specific project and receive notifications when spending reaches 50% and 90%. What should they do?

Accepted Answer

Create a budget at the project level with alert thresholds of 50% and 90%. Option D is correct because budgets can be created at the project level with alert thresholds. Option A is incorrect because an organization-level budget would cover all projects. Option B is overengineering. Option C is possible but not the simplest approach.

Answer

Use the Cloud Billing API to monitor spending and send custom alerts

Answer

Create a budget at the organization level with alert thresholds of 50% and 90%

Answer

Configure a Pub/Sub topic and set up a cloud function to check spending daily

Question 3

A large enterprise manages costs across multiple GCP projects using a shared billing account. They want to apply a 10% discount on all committed use discounts (CUDs) to specific departments based on resource labels. How should they allocate the CUD savings?

Accepted Answer

Enable 'CUD cost attribution' in the billing account settings to automatically distribute savings based on project labels. Option D is correct because enabling CUD cost attribution in billing account settings automatically distributes CUD benefits based on labels. Option A is incorrect because 'Cost Attribution' is for custom cost allocation, not CUDs. Option B is manual and error-prone. Option C is possible but not a built-in feature.

Answer

Use the Cloud Billing report's 'Cost Attribution' feature to assign CUD savings based on labels

Answer

Use the Cloud Billing cost table in BigQuery with the CUD cost data and allocate using custom queries

Answer

Manually calculate CUD savings and distribute via journal entries

Question 4

A DevOps engineer is reviewing GCP costs and notices high network egress charges. Which two actions can help reduce network egress costs? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Use Cloud CDN to cache content closer to users. Options A and B are correct. Using the same region for resources reduces inter-region egress. Cloud CDN caches content, reducing egress to the internet. Option C is not practical. Option D saves compute, not network. Option E increases egress by exposing globally.

Answer

Use preemptible VMs

Answer

Migrate all workloads to a single zone

Answer

Use external load balancers with global access

Question 5

A company wants to set budgets and alerts for a GCP project. Which two steps are required to enable budget notifications via email? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Create a budget alert threshold in the Cloud Console. Options A and C are required. You must create a budget with alert thresholds and add email recipients in the budget configuration. Option B is not required for email. Options D and E are for programmatic notifications.

Answer

Enable the Cloud Billing API for the project

Answer

Create a Pub/Sub topic and subscribe to it

Answer

Set up a Cloud Function to send emails

Question 6

An organization wants to optimize BigQuery costs. Which three practices should they implement? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

Set a maximum bytes billed per query at the project level. Options A, C, and D are correct. Partitioning and clustering reduce data scanned; authorized views eliminate data duplication; setting a max bytes billed caps query costs. Option B is not always optimal, and option E increases costs.

Answer

Store data in multiple tables per day without partitioning

Answer

Purchase BigQuery flat-rate reservations for all queries

Question 7

Refer to the exhibit. A DevOps engineer noticed that the nightly batch processing costs are higher than expected. After running the above command, what is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The instances are not preemptible, leading to higher compute costs. Option C is correct because the instances are not configured as preemptible, leading to higher compute costs. For batch jobs that tolerate interruptions, preemptible VMs are more cost-effective. Option A is not the main issue as they are in the same region. Option B is true but not the primary cost driver for batch workloads. Option D is incorrect because automatic restart does not incur additional charges.

Answer

The instances are running in different zones, increasing egress costs

Answer

The instances are using the n2-standard-4 machine type, which is expensive

Answer

The instances have automatic restart enabled, incurring additional charges

Question 8

Refer to the exhibit. A DevOps engineer configured a budget alert with Pub/Sub notifications. However, the team is not receiving alerts. The Pub/Sub subscription is set up correctly and messages can be published manually. What is the most likely reason the budget alerts are not being sent?

Accepted Answer

The budget filter excludes credits, so actual spend might be lower than threshold. Option A is correct because the budget filter excludes all credits. If credits reduce the actual spend below the thresholds, alerts may not fire. Option B is not a problem; different spend bases are allowed. Option C is irrelevant because Pub/Sub is configured. Option D is not related.

Answer

The notificationsRule does not include email recipients

Answer

The budget amount is specified in units without considering fractional cents

Answer

The threshold rules use different spend basis (CURRENT vs FORECASTED), causing inconsistency

Question 9

Refer to the exhibit. A DevOps engineer needs to view the cost report for a project. Which role should be granted at the organization level to allow viewing billing data for all projects in the organization?

Accepted Answer

roles/billing.viewer. Option C is correct because roles/billing.viewer provides read-only access to billing data. Option A is too permissive. Option B allows linking billing accounts but not viewing reports. Option D is not a valid role.

Answer

roles/billing.admin

Answer

roles/billing.creator

Answer

roles/billing.user

Question 10

A company uses BigQuery on-demand pricing. To control costs, they want to prevent any single query from scanning more than 1 TB of data. How can they enforce this?

Accepted Answer

Use the maximum bytes billed parameter in the query settings. Option D is correct because BigQuery allows setting a maximum bytes billed parameter per query. Option A is for reservations, not per-query limits. Option B is not available. Option C is a budget alert, not a query limit.

Answer

Set a custom cost budget with alert at 1 TB

Answer

Use BigQuery reservations with 1 TB slot capacity

Answer

Set a query quota in the GCP Console quota page

Question 11

A DevOps engineer is responsible for cost optimization of GKE clusters. They have identified that many nodes are underutilized. What is the best approach to reduce costs without impacting availability?

Accepted Answer

Enable cluster autoscaler to automatically scale down nodes. Option A is correct because cluster autoscaler automatically scales down nodes when they are underutilized. Option B is manual and not scalable. Option C may cause disruptions. Option D reduces availability.

Answer

Use spot VMs for all node pools

Answer

Delete underutilized nodes manually

Answer

Migrate to a single zone cluster

Question 12

A company has purchased Compute Engine committed use discounts (CUD) for 1 year for vCPU and memory. After 3 months, they need to upgrade some VMs to a larger machine type. What happens to the CUD coverage?

Accepted Answer

The CUD continues to apply to the original resource, and any additional usage is charged at on-demand rates. Option C is correct because CUDs apply to resource usage (vCPU, memory) not specific machine types. The original commitment continues to cover usage up to the committed amount; any additional usage is on-demand. Option A is incorrect because CUDs are not voided. Option B is incorrect as CUDs are not auto-adjusted. Option D is partially true but A is more accurate. However, the key point is that CUDs cover the resources, so upgrades are covered as long as the resource types match.

Answer

The CUD is automatically adjusted to cover the new machine type

Answer

The CUD applies only to the specific machine types in the commitment, so upgrades are not covered

Answer

The CUD is voided and a refund is issued

Question 13

A DevOps team wants to get a monthly report of GCP costs broken down by service and project. What is the simplest way to achieve this?

Accepted Answer

Use the Cloud Billing reports page to export a CSV directly. Option B is correct because the Cloud Billing reports page allows custom reports and direct CSV export. Option A is more complex. Options C and D are overkill.

Answer

Export billing data to BigQuery and run a scheduled query

Answer

Use the gcloud CLI to run a billing query each month

Answer

Set up a Cloud Function to call the Cloud Billing API and generate a report

Question 14

A company uses BigQuery flat-rate pricing with 1000 slots. During peak hours, queries are queued, but during off-peak, many slots are idle. What is the most cost-effective way to handle the idle slots?

Accepted Answer

Use flex slots to add capacity only during peak. Option B is correct because flex slots allow short-term capacity additions during peak, avoiding idle costs. Option A wastes money on idle slots. Option C increases cost. Option D may not be cheaper overall.

Answer

Purchase additional slots to reduce queuing

Answer

Do nothing; idle slots are already paid for

Answer

Change to on-demand pricing to pay only for data scanned

Question 15

A DevOps engineer notices that the budget alerts for a project are not triggering even though spending exceeds thresholds. The budget is configured at the billing account level, filtering for that project only. The project is linked to the correct billing account. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The budget notifications are only sent to Pub/Sub, and no subscriber is active. Option A is correct because the budget sends notifications to a Pub/Sub topic. If there is no active subscription, alerts are not delivered. Option B could reduce spend but the question says spending exceeds thresholds. Options C and D are less likely or incorrect.

Answer

The budget filter excludes credit types, and the spending includes credits that reduce the effective spend below threshold

Answer

The budget amount is set in units of 1000, so $5000 is actually 5 units, causing confusion

Answer

The budget filter includes services that are not used in the project