Google PCA Manage implementation of cloud architecture Practice Question
A company is designing a highly available architecture for a stateful application on Compute Engine. They need to protect against zonal failures. Which THREE steps should they take?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common misconception is that in-memory session state (Option A) is sufficient for high availability, but it fails because state is lost on instance failure; instead, external session stores (e.g., Cloud Memorystore or Cloud Spanner) are needed for stateful applications on Google Cloud.
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 a global load balancer with health checks
A global load balancer with health checks distributes traffic across healthy instances in multiple zones, automatically routing requests away from failed zones. This ensures that if a zone fails, traffic is redirected to instances in other zones, maintaining availability for the stateful application.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Store session state in memory
Why it's wrong here
Not durable; lost on failure.
- ✓
Use a global load balancer with health checks
Why this is correct
Distributes traffic and fails over.
- ✗
Use a single zone instance group
Why it's wrong here
Single zone is not HA.
- ✓
Use persistent disks with regional persistent disks
Why this is correct
Replicates data across zones.
- ✓
Use a managed instance group across multiple zones
Why this is correct
Distributes instances across zones.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Google Cloud Compute Options Overview
Key term
Zonal
Zonal refers to the practice of grouping computing resources within a single geographic area to improve fault isolation, reduce latency, and meet compliance requirements.
Key term
Global load balancer
A global load balancer distributes incoming network traffic across multiple servers located in different geographic regions to improve performance, reliability, and availability.
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