hardMultiple Choice
Google PCA Practice Question: Designing a disaster recovery strategy for a…
A company is designing a disaster recovery strategy for a critical application running on Compute Engine with a regional managed instance group (MIG) and an HTTP load balancer. They require an RTO of 10 minutes and RPO of 1 hour. The application state is stored in Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL. What is the most cost-effective approach?
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
✓
Use Cloud SQL cross-region replica with a warm standby MIG in the secondary region
Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL supports cross-region replication with a default replication lag typically under 1 hour. For RPO of 1 hour, cross-region replica is sufficient. For RTO of 10 minutes, having a warm standby in another region with a MIG and load balancer configuration that can be promoted quickly meets the requirement. Full active-active is more expensive; restoring from backups is slower; a cold standby may not meet 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.
- ✗
Deploy an active-active configuration across two regions using Cloud Spanner
Why it's wrong here
Active-active with Spanner is more expensive and requires application changes; overkill for the stated RTO/RPO.
- ✗
Configure a cold standby with a Cloud SQL backup and MIG template in another region
Why it's wrong here
Cold standby would not meet 10-minute RTO due to provisioning time.
- ✗
Take daily exports of Cloud SQL to Cloud Storage and restore in another region
Why it's wrong here
Daily exports cannot achieve 1-hour RPO, and restore time may exceed 10 minutes RTO.
- ✓
Use Cloud SQL cross-region replica with a warm standby MIG in the secondary region
Why this is correct
A cross-region replica provides asynchronous replication meeting the one-hour RPO, while the warm standby MIG in the secondary region can be promoted within the ten-minute RTO. This pairing is cheaper than a hot active-active deployment yet satisfies both recovery targets.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Cloud SQL and Managed Data Stores
Key term
RPO
Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is the maximum acceptable amount of data loss measured in time, defining how recent data must be to resume operations after a disruption.
Key term
Cross-Region Replication
Cross-Region Replication is the automated copying of data from a storage bucket in one geographic region to a bucket in a different geographic region for disaster recovery, compliance, or lower latency access.
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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.