Google PCA Manage and provision cloud infrastructure Practice Question
A company has a production database running on Cloud SQL. They need to ensure high availability with automatic failover in the event of a zone outage. What should they do?
⚠ Common exam trap
Google Cloud often tests the distinction between high availability (automatic failover within a region) and disaster recovery (cross-region replication or backups), leading candidates to confuse read replicas or backups with HA solutions.
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
✓
Enable Cloud SQL High Availability (HA) configuration.
Enabling Cloud SQL High Availability (HA) configuration provisions a standby instance in a different zone within the same region, using synchronous replication to ensure zero data loss. In the event of a zone outage, Cloud SQL automatically fails over to the standby instance, typically within 60 seconds, providing high availability without manual intervention.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Export the database to Cloud Storage and import in another region.
Why it's wrong here
Exporting to Cloud Storage and reimporting is a manual restore, not automatic failover; it cannot detect a zone outage or redirect traffic. It is tempting as a disaster-recovery export, and would suit periodic offsite backup or cross-region migration, but not zone-level HA.
- ✓
Enable Cloud SQL High Availability (HA) configuration.
Why this is correct
Cloud SQL High Availability provisions a standby instance in a separate zone with synchronous replication, enabling automatic failover during a zone outage. This directly satisfies the stated availability constraint, whereas read replicas and backups do not provide automatic failover.
- ✗
Create a cross-region read replica.
Why it's wrong here
A cross-region read replica is read-only and requires manual promotion, so it cannot provide automatic failover for a zone outage. It is tempting because replicas do offer redundancy, and would be correct for offloading reads or regional disaster recovery, but not for HA within a region.
- ✗
Configure automated backups.
Why it's wrong here
Automated backups capture point-in-time copies for restore after data loss, but they do not detect a zone outage or fail over automatically. Backups are tempting because they protect data, and would be correct for recovery from corruption or accidental deletion, not for continuous availability.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Data Migration and Transfer Services
Key term
Cloud SQL
Cloud SQL is a fully managed relational database service that lets you set up, maintain, and scale SQL databases (like MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server) in the cloud without managing the underlying infrastructure.
Key term
High availability
High availability is a system design approach that aims to keep applications and services operational and accessible with minimal downtime, even when some components fail.
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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.