Cloud Digital Leader Why cloud technology is transforming business Practice Question

Answer analysis

Option-by-option breakdown

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

• ✗

  Deploy a single large virtual machine in one region and rely on a CDN to serve content globally.

  Why it's wrong here

  A single large VM creates a single point of failure and a hard scalability ceiling; when traffic spikes, the VM can be overwhelmed because it cannot scale horizontally. Cloud CDN only caches static content like images and CSS, so dynamic API calls and compute still travel from users back to that one region, causing high latency for global audiences. This architecture is neither resilient nor elastic, making it unsuitable for a global social media launch.

• ✓

  Build the app on Compute Engine with managed instance groups, use Cloud CDN for global low-latency delivery, and Cloud Storage for user content.

  Why this is correct

  Managed instance groups give you autoscaling and automatic healing, so your app can handle unpredictable global traffic spikes by adding or removing VMs based on load. Cloud CDN accelerates delivery of static assets—like CSS, JavaScript, and media—by caching them at edge locations closer to users, while Cloud Storage provides durable, globally accessible object storage for user-generated content. This combination is fully managed, requires no upfront hardware investment, and lets you start in one region then expand to multiple regions as you grow, which is exactly what a startup needs for a global launch.

• ✗

  Purchase and configure servers in a single colocation facility, and use a content delivery network (CDN) for static assets.

  Why it's wrong here

  Purchasing and configuring servers in a colocation facility requires significant upfront capital expenditure and additional ongoing operational overhead for hardware maintenance, cooling, power, and physical security. Scaling to meet demand means manually ordering, racking, and provisioning new servers, which takes days or weeks—not minutes—and leaves you with idle capacity during lulls. A CDN for static assets does not address the core problems of compute elasticity or global low latency, and this approach is far too slow and expensive for a startup that needs to scale quickly and efficiently.

• ✗

  Use a hybrid cloud model: keep a small on-premises server for core features and burst to the cloud for extra capacity.

  Why it's wrong here

  A hybrid cloud model introduces unnecessary complexity for a startup that has no existing on-premises infrastructure to leverage. You would have to purchase and maintain on-premises servers, establish a secure network connection to the cloud, and manage data synchronization and consistency between the two environments—all of which increase cost and operational burden. The small on-prem server becomes both a bottleneck and a single point of failure for core features, while the burst-to-cloud model still does not provide the global low-latency, multi-region deployment that a worldwide social media app requires.

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