ACE Practice Question: An e-commerce platform sees a 20x traffic spike…
This ACE practice question tests your understanding of an e-commerce platform sees a 20x traffic spike…. Read the scenario carefully and evaluate each option against the stated constraints before committing to an answer. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
An e-commerce platform sees a 20x traffic spike every Black Friday. The rest of the year traffic is low and stable. The team wants to minimize costs during normal periods while handling the annual peak without manual intervention. Which architecture achieves this?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Good practice is not just finding the correct option. The wrong answers often show the exact trap the exam wants you to fall into.
Distractor review
Add 20 manual VMs on Black Friday and delete them afterward each year
Manual scaling requires human intervention and is error-prone. Autoscaling with scheduled policies automates this without annual manual effort.
Distractor review
Deploy on Cloud SQL — it scales compute automatically for traffic spikes
Cloud SQL doesn't automatically scale compute for web traffic — it's a database service. Compute scaling is for application servers, not databases.
Best answer
Managed instance group with autoscaling + scheduled scaling pre-warming before Black Friday
MIG autoscaling handles demand-based scale-out automatically. Scheduled scaling policies can pre-warm additional capacity hours before the known Black Friday spike — combining reactive and proactive scaling.
Distractor review
Pre-provision 20x capacity year-round to guarantee Black Friday performance
Permanent over-provisioning wastes ~19x the resources for 364 days per year — prohibitively expensive.
Common exam trap
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
Many certification questions include familiar terms but test a specific constraint. Read the exact wording before choosing an answer that is generally true but wrong for this case.
Technical deep dive
How to think about this question
This question should be treated as a scenario, not a definition check. Identify the problem, the constraint and the best action. Then compare each option against those facts.
KKey Concepts to Remember
- Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
- Find the constraint that changes the correct option.
- Eliminate answers that are true in general but not in this case.
- Use explanations to understand the rule behind the answer.
TExam Day Tips
- Underline the problem statement mentally.
- Watch for words such as best, first, most likely and least administrative effort.
- Review why wrong options are wrong, not only why the correct option is correct.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
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Use these pages to review the topic behind this question. This is how one missed question becomes focused revision.
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FAQ
Questions learners often ask
What does this ACE question test?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Managed instance group with autoscaling + scheduled scaling pre-warming before Black Friday — Managed instance groups with autoscaling (or Cloud Run for containerized workloads) scale to zero or minimum capacity during quiet periods and expand automatically during demand spikes — no manual intervention needed. Scheduled autoscaling can pre-warm capacity before known peaks.
What should I do if I get this ACE question wrong?
Identify which ACE exam domain this question belongs to, then review the specific concept being tested. Practise related questions in that domain and focus on understanding why each wrong answer is tempting — not just why the correct answer is right.
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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.