Google ACE Practice Question: A media company needs to serve large video files…

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 Storage in a multi-region bucket with direct public access

  Why it's wrong here

  A multi-region Cloud Storage bucket improves data redundancy and availability by replicating objects across multiple GCP regions, but it does not provide edge caching. Users still connect directly to a regional storage endpoint, which may be geographically distant and lacks the performance benefits of Google's edge PoPs. HTTP requests to the bucket are served from storage infrastructure, not from a cache, so latency and egress costs remain higher than they would be with Cloud CDN. Multi-region buckets are a durability feature, not a content-delivery feature.

• ✓

  Cloud Storage + Cloud CDN via a Global Load Balancer backend bucket

  Why this is correct

  Enabling Cloud CDN on a Cloud Storage backend bucket behind a global external load balancer lets video files be cached at Google's edge points of presence (PoPs) around the world. This provides low-latency delivery because users retrieve content from a nearby edge cache rather than from the storage origin, and it offloads egress traffic from Cloud Storage. The global load balancer offers a single anycast IP, so all users are automatically routed to the closest pop, and signed URLs or IAM policies can still enforce access controls. This is the intended solution for globally distributed video delivery.

• ✗

  Upload video files to a Compute Engine VM with nginx serving them directly

  Why it's wrong here

  Serving video from a single Compute Engine VM running nginx creates a single point of failure and a performance bottleneck, especially for geographically distributed users. You would need to manage the VM's operating system, scaling, patching, and networking, and you would still have to configure a load balancer and caching to approach the global performance of Cloud CDN. nginx can do basic web serving, but it cannot automatically place content at edge locations around the world. This option adds operational overhead without solving the global low-latency requirement.

• ✗

  Cloud Filestore with NFS-mounted streaming

  Why it's wrong here

  Cloud Filestore is a managed network file storage service designed for use by internal Compute Engine and GKE workloads, not for serving content over the public internet. Streaming video over NFS would require VMs to mount the file share, convert NFS access into HTTP responses, and manage authentication and scaling themselves. NFS is not an HTTP delivery protocol and does not have any edge caching or global load-balancing capabilities. This solution is architecturally inappropriate for public video delivery and would be both complex and high-latency.

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