Google PCA Practice Question: Managing and Provisioning a Solution Infrastructure
A company has a Cloud Run service that processes high-throughput requests. They want to reduce latency by keeping a baseline of warm instances always ready to handle traffic. Which Cloud Run configuration parameters should they adjust?
⚠ Common exam trap
PCA often tests the misconception that setting max-instances high or concurrency low will keep instances warm, but only min-instances > 0 and CPU always-on actually guarantee warm instances and eliminate cold starts.
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
✓
Set min-instances to 10 and CPU to always-on
Setting min-instances to a value greater than zero (e.g., 10) ensures that Cloud Run keeps that many instances warm and ready at all times, eliminating cold-start latency for the baseline traffic. Additionally, setting CPU to 'always-on' (also called 'CPU always allocated') prevents the CPU from being throttled to near-zero when no requests are being processed, which is critical for background work and for maintaining warm instances that can respond immediately. Together, these two parameters directly address the requirement to keep a baseline of warm instances and reduce latency.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Set min-instances to 0 and max-instances to 100
Why it's wrong here
Min-instances of 0 lets Cloud Run scale to zero, so no warm baseline exists and cold starts persist; max-instances only caps scaling. It is tempting because it minimises cost during idle periods, and would be correct for spiky, latency-tolerant workloads where paying for idle instances is undesirable.
- ✗
Set max-instances to a high value and concurrency to 1
Why it's wrong here
Concurrency of 1 forces each instance to serve one request at a time, and a high max-instances value only permits more instances on demand; neither keeps instances warm. It is tempting because it maximises isolation and parallelism, and would suit CPU-bound workloads needing dedicated per-request capacity.
- ✓
Set min-instances to 10 and CPU to always-on
Why this is correct
Min-instances keeps a baseline of warm instances alive so cold starts do not add latency, while CPU set to always-on prevents throttling between requests. Together they satisfy the requirement for always-ready capacity under high-throughput load.
- ✗
Set max-instances to 0 (unlimited) and concurrency to 80
Why it's wrong here
Max-instances caps concurrent instance count; setting it to 0 removes that ceiling but creates no warm baseline, so cold starts remain. It is tempting because high concurrency and unlimited scaling suit bursty throughput, and would be correct when the goal is handling traffic spikes rather than eliminating startup latency.
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JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Google Cloud exam blueprint
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.