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GCDL Practice Question: A CTO explains to her board that moving to cloud…
This GCDL practice question tests your understanding of a cto explains to her board that moving to cloud…. The scenario asks you to isolate a root cause — eliminate options that address a different problem before choosing. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
A CTO explains to her board that moving to cloud reduces the company's 'total cost of ownership' compared to running an on-premises data center. Which cost category is most commonly underestimated in on-premises TCO calculations?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Good practice is not just finding the correct option. The wrong answers often show the exact trap the exam wants you to fall into.
A
Distractor review
Software licensing costs, which are always higher on-premises than in the cloud
Software licensing costs are not always higher on-premises. Many enterprise licenses can be less expensive on-premises at scale. And even if true, they're not the most commonly underestimated cost category.
B
Distractor review
Internet bandwidth costs, which are negligible on-premises
Internet bandwidth costs are real and tracked on-premises. They are not negligible for organizations with significant external traffic and are typically well-measured.
C
Distractor review
Hardware acquisition costs, which are typically overestimated in on-premises environments
Hardware costs are usually well-tracked since they appear on capital budgets. They are not typically underestimated. The question asks for costs that are underestimated.
D
Best answer
IT staff labor costs for ongoing maintenance, patching, hardware replacement, and operations, which are frequently underestimated in on-premises TCO
Labor is the most underestimated cost in on-premises TCO. Hardware maintenance, OS patching, firmware updates, capacity planning, hardware failure response, data center cooling management — these represent substantial ongoing costs that are often not fully attributed to infrastructure when comparing against cloud.
Common exam trap
Common exam trap: NAT rules depend on direction and matching traffic
NAT is not only about the public address. The inside/outside interface roles and the ACL or rule that matches traffic are just as important.
Technical deep dive
How to think about this question
NAT questions usually test address translation, overload/PAT behaviour, static mappings and whether the right traffic is being translated. Read the interface direction and address terms carefully.
KKey Concepts to Remember
- Static NAT maps one inside address to one outside address.
- PAT allows many inside hosts to share one public address using ports.
- Inside local and inside global describe the private and translated addresses.
- NAT ACLs identify traffic for translation, not always security filtering.
TExam Day Tips
- Identify inside and outside interfaces first.
- Check whether the scenario needs static NAT, dynamic NAT or PAT.
- Do not confuse NAT matching ACLs with normal packet-filtering intent.
Key takeaway
NAT direction and interface roles matter as much as the IP address mapping. Inside/outside designation controls which traffic is translated.
Related practice questions
Related GCDL practice-question pages
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More questions from this exam
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Question 1
A traditional retailer currently maintains its own data centers, purchasing servers every 3–5 years and paying for facilities, power, and staff regardless of demand. When it migrates its workloads to the public cloud, which change in cost model does it experience?
Question 2
An e-commerce company plans its infrastructure for peak shopping events (e.g., Black Friday) which drive 50× normal traffic. On-premises, they must maintain 50× capacity year-round. In the cloud, they provision 50× capacity only during peak periods. Which cloud characteristic enables this cost optimization?
Question 3
Which term describes the process by which organizations integrate digital technology into all areas of their business, fundamentally changing how they operate and deliver value to customers?
Question 4
When a company moves from maintaining its own data center to using Google Cloud, which operational responsibility does Google assume that the company previously managed?
Question 5
A hospital runs a patient records system that must remain on-premises due to strict regulatory data residency requirements. However, they also want to use cloud-based AI for diagnostic imaging analysis. Which cloud deployment model best describes their architecture?
Question 6
What is virtualization in the context of cloud computing, and why is it fundamental to how cloud providers deliver services?
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FAQ
Questions learners often ask
What does this GCDL question test?
Static NAT maps one inside address to one outside address.
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: IT staff labor costs for ongoing maintenance, patching, hardware replacement, and operations, which are frequently underestimated in on-premises TCO — The most commonly underestimated on-premises cost is the people cost — including IT staff time for hardware maintenance, patching, capacity planning, hardware refresh projects, troubleshooting failures, and nights/weekends on-call. Organizations often calculate hardware and software licensing costs accurately but significantly undercount the labor involved in keeping on-premises infrastructure running. Cloud shifts much of this operational burden to the provider.
What should I do if I get this GCDL question wrong?
Review the four NAT address types (inside local, inside global, outside local, outside global), PAT port overload, and static vs dynamic NAT use cases. Then practise related GCDL NAT questions on configuration and troubleshooting.
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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.