Google PCA Practice Question: Analysing and Optimising Technical and Business Processes
A financial services firm runs batch risk calculations nightly using a large Compute Engine VM with a GPU. Jobs complete in 4 hours but are not time-sensitive. To reduce costs without sacrificing reliability, the firm enables preemptible VMs but finds that jobs are interrupted and restarting from scratch causes delays. What is the best approach to improve reliability while maintaining cost savings?
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
✓
Use a managed instance group with preemptible VMs and implement checkpointing to save progress periodically.
Using managed instance groups with preemptible VMs and checkpointing allows the job to resume from the last checkpoint after preemption, maintaining reliability. Simply accepting preemptions or using non-preemptible VMs would not balance cost and reliability.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Request a committed use discount for the GPU and use a standard VM without preemptible.
Why it's wrong here
Committed use discounts are for 1 or 3 years, but the job might not need that commitment and costs are higher than preemptible.
- ✗
Use a non-preemptible VM but downgrade the GPU type to reduce cost.
Why it's wrong here
This would reduce performance and may not achieve the required cost savings.
- ✗
Use a spot VM with a high availability SLA, relying on low preemption rates.
Why it's wrong here
Spot VMs can still be preempted; without checkpointing, reliability is not guaranteed.
- ✓
Use a managed instance group with preemptible VMs and implement checkpointing to save progress periodically.
Why this is correct
Checkpointing allows the job to resume after preemption, and preemptible VMs reduce cost.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Google Cloud Compute Options Overview
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
Batch
Batch is a cloud computing service that runs large numbers of computing jobs as a group, or batch, without needing to manage individual servers.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
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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.