Google PCA Ensure solution and operations reliability Practice Question
A company deploys a web application on Compute Engine behind an HTTP Load Balancer. They want to ensure only healthy instances receive traffic. What should they configure?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates confuse health checks with autoscaling metrics, assuming that CPU-based autoscaling alone ensures traffic is only sent to healthy instances, when in fact health checks are a separate mechanism required for load balancer traffic routing.
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
✓
Configure an HTTP health check with a custom request path that returns a 200 status
An HTTP health check with a custom request path that returns a 200 status allows the HTTP Load Balancer to verify that the web application is actually serving requests correctly. This ensures that only instances passing the application-level health check are considered healthy and receive traffic, preventing requests from being routed to instances that may be running but not serving the expected content.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Configure the instance group autoscaling based on CPU utilization
Why it's wrong here
Autoscaling manages instance count, not routing health decisions.
- ✓
Configure an HTTP health check with a custom request path that returns a 200 status
Why this is correct
HTTP health check validates the application layer by checking a specific endpoint.
- ✗
Configure a TCP health check on port 80
Why it's wrong here
TCP health check only checks port availability, not application response.
- ✗
Configure an SSL health check to verify TLS handshake
Why it's wrong here
SSL health check is for HTTPS backends, not HTTP.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Google Cloud Compute Options Overview
Key term
HTTP
HTTP stands for Hypertext Transfer Protocol, the set of rules web browsers and servers use to communicate and transfer web pages over the internet.
Key term
Health check
A health check is an automated test that monitors whether a system, application, container, or network service is running correctly and can respond to requests.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This PCA 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 PCA exam.