Google ACE Setting Up a Cloud Solution Environment Practice Question
Which of the following is true about Cloud Shell?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often confuse Cloud Shell's persistent home directory storage with a persistent VM — candidates often assume the whole environment is durable, when only the 5 GB $HOME is.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Cloud Shell has 5 GB of persistent home directory storage.
Cloud Shell provides a persistent 5 GB home directory ($HOME) that survives across sessions, so files stored there are retained even after the VM is recycled. This is a core feature of Cloud Shell that distinguishes it from a purely ephemeral terminal. The gcloud CLI, kubectl, and many other tools are pre-installed and pre-authenticated, so no manual setup is required.
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 Shell has 5 GB of persistent home directory storage.
Why this is correct
Cloud Shell provides a temporary, ephemeral VM, but your home directory is backed by a persistent 5 GB disk in Google-managed storage. That 5 GB is the permanent part of the environment — it survives session restarts, VM recycling, and timeouts. This means any files you save under $HOME, including SSH keys, configuration files, and scripts, remain available across all future Cloud Shell sessions, while the compute instance itself is recreated as needed.
- ✗
Cloud Shell requires installation of gcloud and kubectl manually.
Why it's wrong here
gcloud and kubectl are not something you need to install manually — they come pre-installed in every Cloud Shell session. When you launch Cloud Shell, gcloud, kubectl, and a suite of other Google Cloud SDK tools are already in the PATH and ready to use. The entire point of Cloud Shell is to give you a zero-setup command-line environment, so manual installation of these core tools is unnecessary and also redundant, because the underlying container image includes them by default.
- ✗
Cloud Shell only supports the gcloud CLI, not kubectl.
Why it's wrong here
Cloud Shell does not only support gcloud; kubectl is also pre-installed and fully functional, along with tools like bq, gsutil, and the MySQL client. The environment is designed to manage Kubernetes clusters directly from the shell, so you can run kubectl commands against GKE clusters. Therefore, saying that kubectl is not supported is factually wrong — it is one of the core utilities included in the Cloud Shell image.
- ✗
Cloud Shell provides a persistent VM that can run for hours.
Why it's wrong here
The Cloud Shell VM is not a persistent machine that can run for hours. It is an ephemeral, short-lived instance that is automatically recycled after 20 minutes of inactivity, and sessions also have a maximum duration of 12 hours by default. This means you cannot rely on Cloud Shell to keep a long-running process alive or act as a permanent server. The only persistent element of Cloud Shell is the 5 GB home directory, not the underlying VM.
Go deeper
Related to this question
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Persistent Disk Types: SSD, Balanced, Standard
Key term
Cloud Shell
Cloud Shell is a browser-based command-line interface that gives you temporary access to a cloud provider’s infrastructure, complete with pre-installed tools and a file system, without needing to install anything on your own computer.
Key term
gcloud CLI
The gcloud CLI is a command-line tool that lets you manage Google Cloud resources by typing commands instead of clicking through a web interface.
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JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Google Cloud exam blueprint
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.