Google PCA Practice Question: Analysing and Optimising Technical and Business Processes
A company has a Cloud Bigtable instance with 10 nodes. They notice read latency increases during peak hours. Monitoring shows CPU utilization at 70%. Which action will most effectively reduce read latency?
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
✓
Increase the number of nodes
High CPU utilization (70%) indicates the cluster is stressed. Adding nodes increases throughput and reduces latency. SSDs are default, so not a factor. Row key redesign would require application changes. Table splitting is automatic.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Switch from HDD to SSD
Why it's wrong here
Cloud Bigtable uses SSDs by default; HDD is not an option.
- ✗
Redesign row keys to avoid hotspots
Why it's wrong here
Row key design affects distribution, but CPU at 70% suggests capacity issue, not hotspot.
- ✓
Increase the number of nodes
Why this is correct
Adding nodes reduces CPU load and read latency.
- ✗
Split the tables into more tablets
Why it's wrong here
Tablets are automatically split; manual split is not recommended.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Introduction to Google Cloud Platform
Key term
Row
A row is a horizontal record in a database table that contains all the information about a single entity, like one customer or one product.
Key term
Bigtable
Bigtable is Google's fully managed, scalable NoSQL database service designed for large analytical and operational workloads, handling petabytes of data with low latency.
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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.