Google ACE Practice Question: Ensuring Successful Operation of a Cloud Solution
You need to set up log-based alerting in Cloud Logging to send notifications when a specific error pattern appears in your application logs. Which TWO components are required to accomplish this?
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
✓
An alerting policy
To create a log-based alert, you need a log-based metric that counts the matching log entries, and an alerting policy that uses that metric. The metric is the source of the condition, and the policy defines when to notify.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
An alerting policy
Why this is correct
The alerting policy is the actual alerting mechanism in Cloud Logging. It defines the conditions that trigger an incident, such as a threshold on a metric (e.g., a log-based metric exceeding a value) and specifies the notification channels (email, Slack, etc.) to receive alerts. Without an alerting policy, a log-based metric only counts or samples log entries; it does not perform any active monitoring or notify anyone.
- ✗
A log sink
Why it's wrong here
A log sink exports log entries from Cloud Logging to other destinations like Cloud Storage, BigQuery, or Pub/Sub. It is used for long-term retention, analysis, or streaming, but it does not evaluate log data for alerting conditions. Creating a sink alone will never trigger an alert; it only moves the data out of Logging.
- ✗
A Cloud Pub/Sub topic
Why it's wrong here
Cloud Pub/Sub can be a notification channel for an alerting policy, but a Pub/Sub topic itself is only a messaging infrastructure. You can publish alert notifications to a topic, but setting up a topic does not create an alert or define any monitoring condition. Alerts require a policy that references a metric and chooses a notification channel; the channel alone is passive.
- ✗
An uptime check
Why it's wrong here
An uptime check monitors the availability and latency of an external HTTPS or TCP endpoint from Google-managed locations. It does not inspect log content or support log-based conditions. You can configure alerting on an uptime check, but that is resource-availability monitoring, not log-based alerting; it is an entirely different tool from analyzing log entries.
- ✓
A log-based metric
Why this is correct
A log-based metric extracts information from log entries (e.g., counting occurrences of an error) and makes it available for monitoring and alerting. It is a named filter that transforms logs into a metric, which is the data source an alerting policy will watch. However, the metric itself does not send notifications or set thresholds; it merely provides the numerical value that the policy uses to decide whether to alert.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Google Cloud Platform Overview
Key term
Cloud logging
Cloud logging is the practice of collecting, storing, and analyzing log data generated by cloud-based resources and applications to monitor performance, troubleshoot issues, and maintain security.
Key term
Alerting policy
An alerting policy is a set of rules that defines when to send notifications about a system condition that needs attention.
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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.