Google PCA Ensure solution and operations reliability Practice Question
A company runs a stateful workload on Compute Engine with regional persistent disks (PD). They need to implement a disaster recovery (DR) plan with a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of less than 1 hour and Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of less than 4 hours. Which THREE steps should they include in their DR plan? (Choose three.)
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse zonal replication (regional PD) with cross-region disaster recovery; regional PDs only protect against zonal failures, not regional outages, so they cannot meet a cross-region DR requirement.
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
✓
Take snapshots of the persistent disk every 30 minutes and copy them to a Cloud Storage bucket in another region
Taking snapshots every 30 minutes meets the RPO of less than 1 hour. By copying these snapshots to a Cloud Storage bucket in another region, you ensure data is available in a DR region for recovery, which is essential for cross-region disaster recovery.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Take snapshots of the persistent disk every 30 minutes and copy them to a Cloud Storage bucket in another region
Why this is correct
Correct: meets RPO and protects against regional failure.
- ✗
Create a snapshot schedule for the persistent disk every 4 hours
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect: 4-hour RPO exceeds 1 hour requirement.
- ✓
Create a custom machine image of the instance and store it in a Cloud Storage bucket in the DR region
Why this is correct
Correct: ensures VM configuration can be restored in DR region.
- ✗
Use regional persistent disks to automatically replicate data to a second zone
Why it's wrong here
Incorrect: regional PD is within region, not cross-region DR.
- ✓
Test the failover procedure quarterly to validate RTO and RPO
Why this is correct
Correct: regular testing ensures plan works.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)
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
Cloud storage
Cloud storage is a service that lets you save data on remote servers accessed over the internet instead of on your computer's hard drive.
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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.