Google ACE Planning and Configuring a Cloud Solution Practice Question
An organisation requires a managed relational database for an online transaction processing (OLTP) application with strong consistency, automated backups, and a 99.95% SLA. The database size is expected to be under 10 TB. Which service meets these requirements at the lowest cost?
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 SQL
Cloud SQL provides managed MySQL/PostgreSQL/SQL Server with automated backups, strong consistency, and a 99.95% SLA for zonal deployments. It is cost-effective for databases under 10 TB. Cloud Spanner is more expensive and suited for global scale.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Bare Metal Solution
Why it's wrong here
Bare Metal Solution provides dedicated physical servers for workloads that require raw hardware or licensed environments such as Oracle databases, but it is not a managed database service. You are responsible for installing, patching, and maintaining the database yourself, so it offers none of the automated backups or high-availability management of Cloud SQL. Therefore, it cannot satisfy the requirement for a managed relational database.
- ✗
Cloud Bigtable
Why it's wrong here
Cloud Bigtable is a fully managed, wide-column NoSQL database designed for high-throughput analytical workloads, not for relational data processing. It does not support SQL joins, relational integrity, or cross-row ACID transactions, and its consistency model is not optimized for OLTP. Thus, despite being managed, it is not a relational database and would fail the core requirement.
- ✓
Cloud SQL
Why this is correct
Cloud SQL is a fully managed relational database service offering MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server engines with automated backups, point-in-time recovery, and integrated high availability, making it ideal for OLTP workloads using SQL. It provides strong ACID consistency and a 99.95% SLA at a predictable price point for databases under 10 TB, which fits the stated need without over-provisioning. This combination of managed operations, relational features, and reasonable cost makes Cloud SQL the correct choice.
- ✗
Cloud Spanner
Why it's wrong here
Cloud Spanner is a globally distributed relational database service that offers external strong consistency and horizontal scaling, but it carries a high minimum cost and operational complexity due to its multi-region architecture. For a single-region deployment with less than 10 TB of data, Cloud Spanner will be significantly more expensive than Cloud SQL and provides no real benefit beyond what Cloud SQL offers. While it is technically relational and managed, it is overkill and under-optimal for this straightforward use case.
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Related to this question
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Google Cloud Platform Overview
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
Service
A service is a software component or system that performs a specific function and is available to be used by other programs or users over a network.
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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.