Google PCA Practice Question: Analysing and Optimising Technical and Business Processes
A company is designing a disaster recovery plan for a critical application running on Compute Engine. The application requires a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of 15 minutes and a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of 4 hours. Which TWO strategies meet these requirements? (Choose 2)
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
✓
Warm standby: run a scaled-down version of the environment in another region
Pilot light involves replicating data and having a minimal environment ready to scale. Warm standby maintains a partially scaled environment. Both can achieve RPO of 15 minutes and RTO of 4 hours with proper setup. Multi-region deployment and active-passive are not defined in terms of RPO/RTO.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Multi-region deployment with Cloud Load Balancing
Why it's wrong here
Multi-region deployment is for active-active, not necessarily DR with stated RPO/RTO.
- ✓
Warm standby: run a scaled-down version of the environment in another region
Why this is correct
Warm standby can achieve faster recovery than pilot light, still within 4 hours.
- ✗
Backup and restore: daily backups to Cloud Storage
Why it's wrong here
Daily backups exceed 15-minute RPO.
- ✓
Pilot light: replicate data to another region and have a minimal footprint ready
Why this is correct
Pilot light can achieve RPO of minutes and RTO of hours.
- ✗
Cold standby: periodic snapshots to another region
Why it's wrong here
Cold standby has higher RTO/RPO, typically not within 4 hours RTO.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Google Cloud Compute Options Overview
Key term
Compute Engine
Compute Engine is Google Cloud's Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offering that lets you create and run virtual machines on Google's infrastructure.
Key term
Multi-region
Multi-region refers to a deployment strategy where IT resources, applications, or data are hosted in multiple geographic locations to improve availability, disaster recovery, and performance.
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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.