hardMultiple ChoiceObjective-mapped
Google ACE Practice Question: Deploy a globally distributed, multi-tier…
A company wants to deploy a globally distributed, multi-tier application with strict low-latency communication between the web and database tiers. The database must be fully managed and able to survive a regional outage with automatic failover. Which combination is most appropriate?
⚠ Common exam trap
Google Cloud often tests the distinction between zonal and regional resilience, where candidates mistakenly assume that Cloud SQL's regional automatic failover (which covers zonal outages) is sufficient for a regional outage, but the question explicitly requires survival of a regional outage, which demands a multi-region database like Spanner.
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
✓
Cloud Run (multi-region) and Cloud Spanner (multi-region)
Cloud Run (multi-region) provides a serverless compute layer that can automatically route traffic across regions for low-latency access, while Cloud Spanner (multi-region) offers a fully managed, globally distributed relational database with synchronous replication and automatic failover, ensuring strong consistency and regional outage survival without manual intervention. This combination meets the strict low-latency communication and automatic failover requirements for a multi-tier application.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Cloud Run (multi-region) and Cloud SQL (cross-region replica with manual failover)
Why it's wrong here
Combining Cloud Run (multi-region) with Cloud SQL's cross-region replica is not a true multi-region architecture for automatic failover. Cloud SQL's cross-region replication is asynchronous, and promoting a replica to primary requires manual intervention, which can take minutes and risks data loss. While Cloud Run can route traffic globally, your database becomes a single point of failure in a regional outage unless you manually fail over and repoint the application, so this doesn't meet the requirement of a globally distributed multi-tier application with automatic resilience.
- ✗
Compute Engine regional managed instance group and Cloud SQL (regional with automatic failover)
Why it's wrong here
A Compute Engine regional managed instance group and a regional Cloud SQL instance with automatic failover provide high availability only across zones within a single region. The regional MIG can absorb zonal failures by rescheduling VMs, and Cloud SQL's regional automatic failover promotes a standby in a different zone, but both compute and database remain fully dependent on that region. If the entire region becomes unavailable, both the application tier and the data tier go down simultaneously, so this architecture cannot satisfy the global distribution and multi-region failover requirement.
- ✗
App Engine (standard) and Cloud Datastore (multi-region)
Why it's wrong here
App Engine (standard) can be deployed in multiple regions, but pairing it with Cloud Datastore (multi-region) fails the relational database requirement of a typical multi-tier application. Cloud Datastore is a NoSQL document database that does not support SQL semantics such as joins, foreign keys, or ACID transactions across entities, which are often essential for an enterprise multi-tier app. While multi-region Datastore gives strong consistency for entities, the fundamental data model mismatch means it is not a drop-in replacement for a relational database, and porting an existing relational schema would require significant rearchitecting.
- ✓
Cloud Run (multi-region) and Cloud Spanner (multi-region)
Why this is correct
Cloud Run (multi-region) and Cloud Spanner (multi-region) together provide a truly global, automatically failing-over architecture. Spanner uses synchronous replication across multiple regions with the Paxos protocol, providing both strong consistency and automatic failover without manual intervention, unlike Cloud SQL. Cloud Run multi-region services automatically route traffic to the nearest healthy region, and when paired with Spanner's multi-region configuration, the entire application stack becomes resilient to both zonal and regional outages. This combination satisfies the low-latency, global distribution, and relational requirements of the multi-tier application.
Quick reference
Cloud Service Model Comparison
| Model | You Manage | Provider Manages | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| IaaS | OS, runtime, apps, data | Hardware, hypervisor, networking | EC2, Azure VMs, GCP Compute Engine |
| PaaS | Apps and data | OS, runtime, middleware, hardware | Elastic Beanstalk, Azure App Service |
| SaaS | Data and settings only | Everything else | Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Workday |
| FaaS / Serverless | Function code only | Infra, scaling, runtime | Lambda, Azure Functions, Cloud Run |
| CaaS | Containers and apps | Kubernetes, OS, hardware | EKS, AKS, GKE |
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Google Cloud Platform Overview
Key term
Cloud Run
Cloud Run is a fully managed compute platform from Google Cloud that lets you run containerized applications in a serverless environment, automatically scaling from zero to thousands of requests.
Key term
Region
A region is a distinct geographic location where a cloud provider operates multiple data centers that are connected by low-latency networks and provide cloud services.
About these practice questions
This ACE question is part of Courseiva's 769-question bank — original exam-style content with full explanations and wrong-answer analysis, never real exam questions or exam dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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.