Cloud Digital Leader How Google Cloud Resources Are Managed Practice Question
A team notices that their Compute Engine instances are consistently running at low CPU utilization. They want to reduce costs by receiving recommendations to resize or stop idle VMs. Which service provides these recommendations?
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
✓
Active Assist
Active Assist includes Recommender, which provides cost optimization recommendations such as rightsizing VMs, identifying idle resources, and suggesting committed use discounts.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Cost Management dashboard
Why it's wrong here
The Cost Management dashboard aggregates billing data to display historical and forecasted spend across projects and services. While it is useful for tracking budget and identifying cost trends, it is a reporting tool that does not analyze workload utilization patterns. It cannot generate prescriptive recommendations such as rightsizing instances or stopping idle resources, which are required to solve this cost issue.
- ✗
Cloud Scheduler
Why it's wrong here
Cloud Scheduler is a fully managed cron service that triggers HTTP endpoints, Pub/Sub topics, or App Engine targets at scheduled intervals. It is designed for automating recurring tasks like batch jobs or data pipelines, not for analyzing infrastructure cost or resource utilization. Therefore, it plays no role in identifying or remediating excessive Compute Engine costs.
- ✓
Active Assist
Why this is correct
Active Assist is Google Cloud's suite of intelligent tools, and its Recommender service continuously analyzes resource usage patterns using machine learning. For Compute Engine, it provides actionable recommendations such as resizing over-provisioned instances to optimally matched machine types or stopping idle and unattached instances. This prescriptive guidance directly addresses the observed high and wasteful costs, making it the correct tool for proactive cost optimization.
- ✗
Cloud Monitoring
Why it's wrong here
Cloud Monitoring collects metrics, logs, and events from Compute Engine and visualizes them in dashboards with alerting policies. Although it can reveal that instances are underutilized or idle, it does not automatically convert this data into cost-saving recommendations. It is an observability tool, not an optimization engine, so it cannot independently suggest rightsizing or decommissioning actions.
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Related to this question
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Compute Options on Google Cloud
Key term
Service
A service is a software component or system that performs a specific function and is available to be used by other programs or users over a network.
Key term
Compute Engine
Compute Engine is Google Cloud's Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offering that lets you create and run virtual machines on Google's infrastructure.
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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.