Google ACE Planning and Configuring a Cloud Solution Practice Question
A company is migrating a PostgreSQL database to Cloud SQL. They need high availability with automatic failover and a read replica for reporting queries that must not impact the primary. Which Cloud SQL configuration should they choose?
⚠ Common exam trap
ACE often tests the misconception that a failover replica is the same as a read replica; candidates must remember that HA provides automatic failover, while read replicas are for scaling reads and do not failover.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
High Availability (HA) configuration with a read replica
Cloud SQL High Availability (HA) configuration provides a standby instance in a different zone with automatic failover, satisfying the HA requirement. Adding a read replica offloads reporting queries from the primary, ensuring they do not impact production performance. This combination meets both the HA and read-scaling needs.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
High Availability (HA) configuration with automatic storage increase
Why it's wrong here
High Availability ensures automatic failover using a synchronous standby in another zone, while automatic storage increase merely expands the disk when usage thresholds are crossed. Neither feature addresses the requirement to separate reporting queries from production traffic. As a result, reporting workloads would still contend with primary transactions, defeating the purpose of migrating to Cloud SQL for workload isolation.
- ✓
High Availability (HA) configuration with a read replica
Why this is correct
Cloud SQL HA automatically fails over to a synchronous standby in a different zone, protecting against zonal outages. A read replica, created using binary log replication, serves read-only queries like reporting without burdening the primary. Together, these features satisfy both availability and performance needs, allowing the reporting workload to run in parallel with production.
- ✗
Single zone instance with a failover replica
Why it's wrong here
Cloud SQL HA does not use a failover replica in the same zone; it provisions a synchronous standby in a different zone. A single-zone instance with a manual or external failover replica would require human intervention to promote the replica, and the replica itself is not automatically maintained or monitored by Cloud SQL. Thus, this option neither guarantees automatic failover nor provides read scaling, making it unsuitable for a production PostgreSQL migration.
- ✗
Single zone instance with cross-region replication
Why it's wrong here
Cross-region replication in Cloud SQL creates an asynchronous read replica in a separate region, which is intended for disaster recovery and low-latency reads near that region. It does not provide automatic failover within the primary region, and placing the primary in a single zone means any local zonal outage would still cause downtime. Moreover, cross-region replicas do not offload same-region reporting load efficiently, so this architecture fails both availability and workload separation requirements.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Cloud Debugger and Error Reporting
Key term
Cloud SQL
Cloud SQL is a fully managed relational database service that lets you set up, maintain, and scale SQL databases (like MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server) in the cloud without managing the underlying infrastructure.
Key term
High availability
High availability is a system design approach that aims to keep applications and services operational and accessible with minimal downtime, even when some components fail.
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JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Google Cloud exam blueprint
This ACE practice question is part of Courseiva's free Google Cloud certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the ACE exam.