Google ACE Setting Up a Cloud Solution Environment Practice Question
You are setting up billing for a new GCP project. You want to receive an alert when the projected cost for the month exceeds 80% of your budget. You also want to be notified if the actual cost reaches 100%. Which budget alert thresholds should you set?
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
✓
Set a single alert at 80% and another at 100%
Budget alerts can be set at specific percentages, but only whole numbers are allowed. Typically, you set alerts at 80% and 100%. The 80% alert is for projected cost, and 100% is for actual cost.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Set a single alert at 100% and use the 'forecast' option to get projected cost alerts
Why it's wrong here
A single alert at 100% only fires after the budget is already exceeded, providing no advance warning to prevent overspend. The 'forecast' option is not a separate threshold setting; forecasted spend can be monitored by selecting 'Forecasted' as the spend type when creating a budget alert, but you still must specify a percentage threshold. Relying solely on 100% contradicts the requirement to be alerted at both 80% and 100% of the budget.
- ✓
Set a single alert at 80% and another at 100%
Why this is correct
Configuring two budget alerts at 80% and 100% satisfies the requirement precisely: the 80% threshold warns you that costs are approaching the limit while there is still time to act, and the 100% threshold notifies you the moment the budget is fully consumed. Google Cloud's budget feature allows multiple alert thresholds on the same budget, each published to your selected notification channels. This approach avoids alert fatigue and covers both proactive and reactive notification needs.
- ✗
Set alerts at 50%, 80%, and 100%
Why it's wrong here
While including a 50% alert is allowed, it is unnecessary for the stated requirement, which explicitly asks for alerts at 80% and 100% only. Adding 50% introduces an extra notification that may cause alert fatigue, especially in a large organization where cost alerts are expected to be meaningful. The optimal configuration should match the exact thresholds specified in the requirement.
- ✗
Set a single alert at 80% for projected cost; GCP automatically alerts at 100%
Why it's wrong here
GCP does not automatically create a 100% budget alert; you must explicitly configure every threshold. A single alert on forecasted spend at 80% will fire when projections hit 80%, but it will not notify you when actual spend crosses 100%, since that threshold was never defined. Therefore this setup fails the requirement to have a distinct 100% alert.
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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.