Google ACE Planning and Configuring a Cloud Solution Practice Question
An organization wants to migrate a 5 TB on-premises MongoDB database to Google Cloud. They need to minimize latency for write operations and support global users with strong consistency. Which three services or tools should they consider for this migration? (Choose 3)
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
✓
Transfer Appliance
MongoDB Atlas is available on Google Cloud and provides global distribution with strong consistency. Database Migration Service does not support MongoDB natively. Bigtable is not compatible. Cloud Spanner is globally distributed and strongly consistent. Transfer Appliance is for large data transfers. BigQuery is not suitable.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Database Migration Service
Why it's wrong here
Cloud Database Migration Service is designed for relational database engines (e.g., MySQL, PostgreSQL, Oracle, SQL Server) and does not have a connector for MongoDB. Since the source is a 5 TB on-premises MongoDB deployment, DMS cannot read the MongoDB wire protocol or BSON data format, making it inapplicable for this migration.
- ✗
Cloud Bigtable
Why it's wrong here
Cloud Bigtable is a fully managed wide-column NoSQL database that is not wire-compatible with MongoDB. Migrating would require reshaping BSON documents into column families, rewriting all queries and operational code, and dealing with different consistency and indexing models, so it is not an appropriate target for a like-for-like MongoDB migration.
- ✓
Transfer Appliance
Why this is correct
Google Cloud Transfer Appliance is a physical storage server that you rack locally, copy the MongoDB data (for example, via mongodump or file-level copies) onto, and ship back to Google so the data is ingested into Cloud Storage. For a one-time 5 TB dataset, this avoids the time and potential cost of a long online upload over constrained network links, and it is a fully supported Google Cloud migration path.
- ✓
MongoDB Atlas on Google Cloud
Why this is correct
MongoDB Atlas on Google Cloud is a managed MongoDB platform that runs the same MongoDB engine and wire protocol, so an on-premises MongoDB workload can be migrated with minimal application changes. It offers built-in global distribution and strong consistency, and live migration or mongorestore tools allow the 5 TB dataset to be loaded directly into Atlas, making it a natural target for this scenario.
- ✓
Cloud Spanner
Why this is correct
Cloud Spanner is a massively scalable, globally distributed database with SQL semantics and strong external consistency, making it a legitimate re-platforming target if the organization is willing to transform the MongoDB document model into relational tables. Migrating to Spanner would require using a data pipeline like Dataflow to extract BSON fields into columns and rewriting application queries in SQL, but it can serve the workload with the same high-availability requirements that MongoDB provided.
Go deeper
Related to this question
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Google Cloud Platform Overview
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.
Key term
BigQuery
BigQuery is a fully managed, serverless data warehouse on Google Cloud that lets you run fast SQL queries on massive datasets without managing any infrastructure.
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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.