hardMultiple Choice
Google PCA Migrating a legacy e-commerce platform to GKE Practice Question
A company is migrating a legacy e-commerce platform to GKE. The application consists of several stateless microservices and a stateful database. They want to minimize operational overhead for the database while ensuring high availability across zones. Which database option should they choose?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap is confusing high availability with global scalability; candidates may pick Cloud Spanner because it sounds more robust, but it introduces unnecessary complexity and cost for a single-region e-commerce platform, while Cloud SQL regional HA directly addresses the stated requirements.
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
✓
Cloud SQL for MySQL with regional high availability
Cloud SQL for MySQL with regional high availability minimizes operational overhead because it is a fully managed database service that handles replication, failover, and maintenance automatically, while regional HA ensures synchronous replication across multiple zones for high availability. The application's stateful database component can be migrated with minimal changes, and Google manages patching, backups, and failover. This directly meets the requirements of minimizing operational overhead and ensuring cross-zone high availability.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Cloud SQL for MySQL with regional high availability
Why this is correct
Cloud SQL for MySQL with regional high availability replicates synchronously across two zones with automatic failover, minimising operational overhead for the stateful database while meeting the cross-zone availability requirement. A self-managed database on GKE would add significant administration.
- ✗
Deploy MySQL on GKE StatefulSet with persistent volumes
Why it's wrong here
A StatefulSet leaves patching, failover, backups and cross-zone replication to the team, contradicting the minimal-overhead requirement. It is tempting because it keeps MySQL portable and familiar, and suits teams needing full control over a self-managed database rather than a managed service.
- ✗
Cloud Firestore
Why it's wrong here
Firestore is a NoSQL document store, so it cannot host the legacy platform's relational schema, joins or transactions without rewriting the database layer. It is tempting as a fully managed, multi-zone service, and would fit a new document-oriented application rather than a migrated relational one.
- ✗
Cloud Spanner
Why it's wrong here
Cloud Spanner is globally distributed and strongly consistent, but its provisioned nodes and per-node pricing add cost and tuning overhead a single-region stateful database does not need. Tempting for multi-region scale, yet Cloud SQL or AlloyDB with regional HA meets this requirement with less operational burden.
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Related to this question
Learn chapter
Cloud SQL and Managed Data Stores
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.
Key term
Regional
Regional refers to a deployment strategy where cloud resources are distributed across multiple geographic areas to improve availability, reduce latency, and meet compliance requirements.
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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
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