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GCDL Practice Question: A company's cloud cost has grown significantly
This GCDL practice question tests your understanding of a company's cloud cost has grown significantly. Read the scenario carefully and evaluate each option against the stated constraints before committing to an answer. 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 company's cloud cost has grown significantly. A FinOps analysis reveals the largest waste category is idle Cloud SQL instances — 12 database instances that were provisioned for projects that have since ended, but were never deleted. What process failure most directly caused this waste?
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
The company should have used a cheaper database service instead of Cloud SQL
Service choice doesn't address the root cause — idle instances of any database service would produce waste. The problem is that instances weren't deleted when no longer needed.
B
Best answer
The absence of a resource decommissioning process: when projects end, there is no formal step to identify and delete associated cloud resources, allowing idle infrastructure to persist and accrue costs indefinitely
This is the root cause. FinOps best practice requires a defined lifecycle process: when a project is closed or a service is decommissioned, associated cloud resources are explicitly identified and deleted. Without this step, idle resources accumulate. The fix is process: add resource cleanup to the project closure checklist and automate detection of idle resources.
C
Distractor review
Cloud SQL pricing is too high compared to on-premises databases, making any unused capacity expensive
Pricing is not the root cause. Even at discounted prices, idle resources that serve no purpose are waste. The fix is process, not pricing negotiation.
D
Distractor review
The database administrators forgot to enable automatic deletion for idle Cloud SQL instances
Cloud SQL doesn't have an automatic deletion feature for idle instances. The process fix is human: include resource deletion in project closure procedures, supported by automated idle resource detection tools.
Common exam trap
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
Many certification questions include familiar terms but test a specific constraint. Read the exact wording before choosing an answer that is generally true but wrong for this case.
Technical deep dive
How to think about this question
This question should be treated as a scenario, not a definition check. Identify the problem, the constraint and the best action. Then compare each option against those facts.
KKey Concepts to Remember
- Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
- Find the constraint that changes the correct option.
- Eliminate answers that are true in general but not in this case.
- Use explanations to understand the rule behind the answer.
TExam Day Tips
- Underline the problem statement mentally.
- Watch for words such as best, first, most likely and least administrative effort.
- Review why wrong options are wrong, not only why the correct option is correct.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Related practice questions
Related GCDL practice-question pages
Use these pages to review the topic behind this question. This is how one missed question becomes focused revision.
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?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: The absence of a resource decommissioning process: when projects end, there is no formal step to identify and delete associated cloud resources, allowing idle infrastructure to persist and accrue costs indefinitely — The root cause is a missing decommissioning/project lifecycle process. When projects end, there is no formal step to identify and delete associated cloud resources. Without a resource lifecycle process (and ideally automated detection of idle resources), infrastructure persists and accrues costs indefinitely. Cloud Asset Inventory and billing anomaly detection can help identify this waste, but the process fix is a formal resource decommissioning step in the project closing procedure.
What should I do if I get this GCDL question wrong?
Identify which GCDL exam domain this question belongs to, then review the specific concept being tested. Practise related questions in that domain and focus on understanding why each wrong answer is tempting — not just why the correct answer is right.
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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.