Google ACE Practice Question: Ensuring Successful Operation of a Cloud Solution
You need to create a log-based metric that counts the number of errors in your application logs. What must you do first in Cloud Logging?
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
✓
Define a filter that matches the error logs
In Cloud Logging, a log-based metric is based on a filter. You define the filter using the logging query language to match the logs you want to count, then create the metric from that filter.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Create an alerting policy with a condition
Why it's wrong here
An alerting policy is a downstream consumer that evaluates an existing metric time series—it cannot manufacture a metric from raw log entries. Without a logs-based metric already defined, there is nothing for the alerting condition to reference, so creating the policy first is circular and ineffective.
- ✗
Create a log sink that exports logs to BigQuery
Why it's wrong here
A log sink is a routing mechanism that forwards raw log entries to a destination like BigQuery, Cloud Storage, or Pub/Sub; it does not perform counting or aggregation. While BigQuery can later analyze exported logs, that would be a separate pipeline and does not produce a metric usable by Cloud Monitoring for alerting or dashboards.
- ✓
Define a filter that matches the error logs
Why this is correct
The correct approach is to define a filter expression in Cloud Logging that matches the error logs (e.g., severity=ERROR or specific text), then use that filter to create a logs-based metric. The metric counter increments for every matching log entry, and the filter becomes the metric's definition, allowing you to alert on the count over time.
- ✗
Install the Logging agent on your VMs
Why it's wrong here
The Logging agent (formerly Stackdriver Agent) is used to collect logs and metrics from VM instances and send them to Cloud Logging, not to create metrics from already-ingested logs. If your error logs are already present in Cloud Logging—for example from GKE, App Engine, or existing agents—installing an agent does nothing to define a metric filter or count occurrences.
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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.