Google PCA Ensure solution and operations reliability Practice Question
A company runs a microservices-based application on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) with a Regional cluster. They want to improve reliability by implementing best practices for pod scheduling and resilience. Which TWO actions should they take? (Choose two.)
⚠ Common exam trap
Google Cloud often tests the distinction between voluntary disruptions (handled by PDB) and involuntary disruptions (e.g., node failure), and the trap here is that candidates confuse resource optimization (requests/limits) or scaling (cluster autoscaler) with resilience mechanisms like PDB and anti-affinity.
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
✓
Define a PodDisruptionBudget for each deployment to limit the number of concurrent disruptions
A PodDisruptionBudget (PDB) limits the number of Pods of a replicated application that can be down simultaneously from voluntary disruptions, such as node maintenance or cluster upgrades. This ensures that a minimum number of replicas remain available, improving application reliability during planned events.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Set terminationGracePeriodSeconds to 0 for faster pod termination during scale-down
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect: short grace period can kill active requests.
- ✗
Enable cluster autoscaler to automatically add nodes when pods are pending
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect: autoscaler helps capacity but not directly pod scheduling resilience.
- ✓
Define a PodDisruptionBudget for each deployment to limit the number of concurrent disruptions
Why this is correct
Correct: PDB ensures minimum availability during voluntary disruptions.
- ✗
Set resource requests equal to limits to ensure guaranteed QoS class
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect: QoS class does not directly improve reliability for pod scheduling.
- ✓
Configure pod anti-affinity to spread replicas across different zones
Why this is correct
Correct: improves fault tolerance by distributing across zones.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Introduction to Google Cloud Platform
Key term
Anthos
Anthos is a Google Cloud platform that lets you run applications consistently across different computing environments, like on-premises data centers and multiple public clouds.
Key term
GKE
GKE is Google's managed Kubernetes service that automates deploying, scaling, and managing containerized applications in the cloud.
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