Google PCA Ensure solution and operations reliability Practice Question
A company wants to monitor the health of their Cloud Run services. Which THREE metrics should they use to define a comprehensive health SLI? (Choose 3)
⚠ Common exam trap
Google Cloud often tests the misconception that infrastructure-level metrics like CPU or instance count are valid health SLIs for serverless services, when in fact user-facing metrics (latency, errors, request count) are the correct choices for a comprehensive health SLI.
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
✓
Latency (e.g., p99 response time)
Latency (p99 response time) is a critical metric for Cloud Run because it measures the end-to-end request processing time, directly reflecting user experience. In a serverless environment, high latency can indicate cold starts, insufficient concurrency, or downstream service bottlenecks, making it essential for a comprehensive health SLI.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Latency (e.g., p99 response time)
Why this is correct
Latency is a key performance SLI for user experience.
- ✗
CPU utilization
Why it's wrong here
CPU utilization is an internal metric, not customer-facing.
- ✓
Request count
Why this is correct
Request count is needed to calculate error ratio for availability.
- ✗
Instance count
Why it's wrong here
Instance count is an infrastructure metric, not a direct health indicator.
- ✓
Error rate (percentage of 5xx responses)
Why this is correct
Error rate directly reflects service availability.
Quick reference
Cloud Service Model Comparison
| Model | You Manage | Provider Manages | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| IaaS | OS, runtime, apps, data | Hardware, hypervisor, networking | EC2, Azure VMs, GCP Compute Engine |
| PaaS | Apps and data | OS, runtime, middleware, hardware | Elastic Beanstalk, Azure App Service |
| SaaS | Data and settings only | Everything else | Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Workday |
| FaaS / Serverless | Function code only | Infra, scaling, runtime | Lambda, Azure Functions, Cloud Run |
| CaaS | Containers and apps | Kubernetes, OS, hardware | EKS, AKS, GKE |
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
IAM Policies, Service Accounts, and Auditing
Key term
Cloud Run
Cloud Run is a fully managed compute platform from Google Cloud that lets you run containerized applications in a serverless environment, automatically scaling from zero to thousands of requests.
Key term
Service
A service is a software component or system that performs a specific function and is available to be used by other programs or users over a network.
About these practice questions
One of 807 original PCA practice questions on Courseiva, each with a full explanation and wrong-answer analysis — not exam dumps or protected exam content. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
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.