Cloud Digital Leader Practice Question: A small business wants to host a static website…

Answer analysis

Option-by-option breakdown

For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.

• ✗

  Compute Engine with Apache

  Why it's wrong here

  Compute Engine with Apache is the wrong choice because it forces you to manage virtual machines, apply OS security patches, handle disk snapshots, and manually configure autoscaling groups — all for content that is immutable and equally servable by object storage. A single VM is a single point of failure without a managed instance group, and even then you pay for compute power round-the-clock even when no one visits the site. This option directly contradicts the requirement of minimal effort, as it introduces infrastructure lifecycle management rather than eliminating it.

• ✓

  Cloud Storage with a load balancer

  Why this is correct

  Cloud Storage with a load balancer is the correct answer because Cloud Storage natively serves static website content (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, images) directly from a bucket without any compute resources, and the load balancer provides a stable HTTPS endpoint, SSL certificate, and global anycast IP. The combination gives you automatic high availability and can be fronted by Cloud CDN for low latency at edge locations, all with zero servers to patch or manage. This is the archetypal 'minimal effort' GCP architecture for a static site: you only upload files and configure the load balancer once.

• ✗

  App Engine Standard Environment

  Why it's wrong here

  App Engine Standard Environment requires writing application code in a supported runtime (e.g., Python, Java) and deploying it as a web service, which introduces unnecessary compute overhead and management of scaling configurations for a static site. It is tempting because it offers automatic scaling and a free tier, making it a natural choice for dynamic web applications where server-side logic is needed, but the scenario’s static content is better served by a fully managed object-storage and CDN solution like Cloud Storage with Cloud CDN, which eliminates runtime dependencies entirely.

• ✗

  Cloud Run

  Why it's wrong here

  Cloud Run is wrong because it is designed for containerized applications where you need server-side processing, concurrency control, or a custom runtime; using it to serve a static site forces you to build a container image (e.g., Nginx or BusyBox), push it to Artifact Registry, and manage revision traffic. Even though you don't manage infrastructure, you now have a container lifecycle, potential cold starts, and you pay for container CPU/memory allocation while the site processes zero dynamic logic. For a static site, this is unnecessary operational and architectural overhead when a managed object store can deliver the same bytes with less setup and lower cost.

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