Google PCA Ensure solution and operations reliability Practice Question
A developer wants to monitor the CPU usage of a single Compute Engine VM and receive alerts when it exceeds 80%. What is the simplest way to achieve this?
⚠ Common exam trap
Google Cloud often tests the misconception that you need to export logs to BigQuery or query APIs manually, when in fact the Cloud Monitoring agent provides a built-in, agent-based metric that can be alerted on directly.
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
✓
Install the Cloud Monitoring agent and create an alerting policy based on the metric 'cpu.utilization'.
The Cloud Monitoring agent (formerly Stackdriver agent) collects CPU utilization metrics from Compute Engine VMs and sends them to Cloud Monitoring. You can then create an alerting policy directly on the metric 'cpu.utilization' with a threshold of 80% without any custom scripting or additional infrastructure. This is the simplest and most native approach for a single VM.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Query the Compute Engine API periodically and check CPU usage.
Why it's wrong here
The API does not provide high-frequency granularity for real-time alerting.
- ✗
Configure a Cloud Logging sink to BigQuery and set a scheduled query to detect high CPU.
Why it's wrong here
This is overly complex and not real-time.
- ✓
Install the Cloud Monitoring agent and create an alerting policy based on the metric 'cpu.utilization'.
Why this is correct
The Monitoring agent collects CPU utilization from the OS and sends it to Cloud Monitoring, where you can set alerts.
- ✗
Use the managed instance group's autoscaling metric to trigger a notification.
Why it's wrong here
Autoscaling metrics are for groups, not a single VM.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Resource Monitoring and Logging with Cloud Operations
Key term
Alerting policy
An alerting policy is a set of rules that defines when to send notifications about a system condition that needs attention.
Key term
CAN
A CAN (Controller Area Network) is a robust vehicle bus standard designed to allow microcontrollers and devices to communicate with each other without a host computer.
About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every PCA question from scratch — 807 in total, each with an explanation and a wrong-answer breakdown. None are copied from real exams or dumps. 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.