Google ACE Planning and Configuring a Cloud Solution Practice Question
An organization wants to migrate its on-premises MySQL database to Google Cloud. The database is 2 TB and used by a critical application with read replicas for reporting. The team needs minimal downtime and the ability to fail back if needed. Which migration approach should they use?
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
✓
Use Database Migration Service (DMS) to migrate to Cloud SQL
Database Migration Service (DMS) supports continuous replication with minimal downtime and can fail back. Cloud SQL import/export requires downtime. BigQuery is for analytics, not transactional DB. Compute Engine with MySQL is self-managed and more complex.
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 Database Migration Service (DMS) to migrate to Cloud SQL
Why this is correct
Database Migration Service (DMS) uses continuous MySQL binlog replication to synchronize your on-premises source with Cloud SQL, enabling near-zero downtime cutover. It automatically manages replication health, VPC connectivity, and can fail back to the source if needed, making it the only option that meets the requirement of minimal downtime and a managed destination.
- ✗
Lift and shift MySQL on Compute Engine and set up replication manually
Why it's wrong here
Lifting and shifting MySQL to Compute Engine forces you to manually configure binary log positions, secure replication over the internet or VPN, and build your own failover/backup systems. This approach is operationally heavy, error-prone, and misses the point of the migration because you still have to patch, monitor, and scale the VM yourself instead of using Cloud SQL's managed high-availability and automated backups.
- ✗
Export the database to a Cloud Storage bucket and import into Cloud SQL
Why it's wrong here
Exporting to Cloud Storage with mysqldump and importing into Cloud SQL is a one-time bulk copy that requires stopping writes to the source or risking inconsistent data. During the export/import window your application is effectively down, and the process does not support live replication, so it cannot provide the near-continuous sync that a production migration to a transactional database typically demands.
- ✗
Stream data to BigQuery using Dataflow
Why it's wrong here
BigQuery is a serverless data warehouse designed for analytical queries, not for transactional MySQL workloads—it does not speak the MySQL wire protocol and does not support the same OLTP semantics like row-level locking or ACID transactions. Streaming data into BigQuery via Dataflow would require building custom pipeline logic and still leave you without a Cloud SQL-compatible relational database, so it fundamentally cannot replace the on-premises MySQL instance.
Go deeper
Related to this question
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Google Cloud Platform Overview
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.
Key term
Organization
An Organization is a top-level container in Google Cloud that represents your company or entities and serves as the root node for all your cloud resources, policies, and access control.
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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.