Google ACE Planning and Configuring a Cloud Solution Practice Question

Answer analysis

Option-by-option breakdown

For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.

• ✗

  Use Cloud SQL external replication with a Compute Engine instance

  Why it's wrong here

  External replication to a Compute Engine instance introduces latency from the PostgreSQL streaming protocol over the public internet or a VPN, making it impossible to guarantee an RPO under 5 seconds due to unpredictable network delays. This configuration is tempting because it provides a manual, cross-region replica for read scaling or backup, and would be correct if the RPO requirement were relaxed to minutes or hours.

• ✗

  Deploy a high-availability (HA) configuration within the same region

  Why it's wrong here

  A Cloud SQL high-availability (HA) configuration uses synchronous replication to a standby in a different zone within the same region. It protects against zonal or instance-level failure, but because the standby lives in the same region, a regional event such as a multi-zone outage or regional service disruption takes down both the primary and the standby. This does not meet a cross-region disaster recovery requirement and provides no failover path to us-west1 or any other region.

• ✗

  Enable automatic backups and point-in-time recovery

  Why it's wrong here

  Automatic backups and point-in-time recovery are internal data protection features, not a failover or replication mechanism. Cloud SQL daily backups typically have an RPO of up to 24 hours, and point-in-time recovery is bounded by the transaction log retention window, which cannot be shrunk to seconds. Even with log replay, the recovery point is tied to the last completed backup and transaction logs, so it cannot achieve an RPO under five seconds, nor does it automatically redirect traffic to a replica in another region.

• ✓

  Configure a cross-region read replica in us-west1

  Why this is correct

  Configuring a cross-region read replica in us-west1 uses asynchronous replication from the primary Cloud SQL instance to a read-only instance in the chosen region. This replica continuously applies changes, with replication lag typically in seconds, making the RPO low enough to approach the under-five-second requirement under normal conditions. If the primary region fails, you can promote the read replica to a standalone primary, enabling a managed cross-region disaster recovery path without needing to operate an external Compute Engine instance.

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