Cloud Digital Leader Google Cloud Products and Services Practice Question
A team is designing a CI/CD pipeline for a microservices application. They want to automatically build container images from source code, store them securely, and deploy to GKE. Which THREE services should they include? (Choose three.)
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
✓
Cloud Build
Cloud Build builds container images from source; Artifact Registry stores the images; GKE is the deployment target. Cloud Deploy could also be used for continuous delivery, but the three most essential are Build, Artifact Registry, and GKE.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Cloud Build
Why this is correct
Cloud Build is the fully managed CI/CD service that compiles your source code, runs tests, and builds the container image from a Dockerfile or build config. It executes the build steps defined in your pipeline, generating OCI-compliant images that are then pushed to a registry. This makes Cloud Build the correct core engine for the CI/CD pipeline.
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Cloud Storage
Why it's wrong here
Cloud Storage is an object storage service designed for unstructured data like backups, media files, and static assets, not for storing container images. While it can be used for build artifacts or caching, it does not provide the Docker Registry v2 API, vulnerability scanning, or IAM-based access control needed for container image distribution. Artifact Registry is the proper service for securely storing and managing the built container images.
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Cloud Run
Why it's wrong here
Cloud Run is a serverless container platform that runs stateless HTTP services on a fully managed infrastructure, but the team's deployment target is GKE, which requires Kubernetes clusters and manifest-based orchestration. Cloud Run abstracts away cluster operations, making it a completely different execution model from GKE. Therefore, when GKE is explicitly specified, Cloud Run is not the correct deployment target for this microservices pipeline.
- ✓
Artifact Registry
Why this is correct
Artifact Registry is a private container image repository that fully supports Docker and OCI images, providing a secure location to store the images built by Cloud Build. It integrates natively with Cloud Build and GKE, offering IAM controls, vulnerability scanning, and VPC-SC compatibility. After Cloud Build builds the images, they are pushed to Artifact Registry, from which GKE pulls them for deployment.
- ✓
GKE
Why this is correct
GKE is a managed Kubernetes service that provides the orchestration platform for deploying and running containerized microservices at scale. In this pipeline, GKE is the deployment target that receives the container images from Artifact Registry and schedules them onto the cluster. With features like autoscaling, load balancing, and rolling updates, GKE is the correct environment to run the microservices application.
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Cloud Digital Transformation
Key term
Cloud Build
Cloud Build is a managed service that compiles source code into deployable artifacts, often used in continuous integration and continuous delivery pipelines.
Key term
Container
A container is a lightweight, standalone software package that includes everything needed to run an application, such as code, runtime, system tools, and libraries.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This GCDL 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 GCDL exam.