Google PCA Practice Question: Analysing and Optimising Technical and Business Processes
A global SaaS company wants to reduce the latency of its API for users in Asia, Europe, and North America. The API is stateless and runs on GKE in a single region. The company wants a solution that improves latency for all users without changing the application code. Which approach should the architect recommend?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is assuming that caching at the edge or scaling up a single region will fix global latency, when the real fix is to serve from multiple regions behind a global anycast load balancer.
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
✓
Deploy the API to GKE clusters in multiple regions and use a global external Application Load Balancer with a single anycast IP address.
To reduce latency for a global user base without code changes, the application must run close to users and be fronted by a global entry point. Deploying the stateless API in multiple regions and placing a global external Application Load Balancer in front provides a single anycast IP that directs users to the nearest healthy backend. CDN, Traffic Director, and vertical scaling do not achieve this global proximity for dynamic API traffic.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Use Traffic Director with a global load balancing policy to distribute traffic across regional backends.
Why it's wrong here
Traffic Director is designed for service mesh and proxyless gRPC load balancing within and across clusters, and it requires sidecars or gRPC support. For a stateless HTTP API without code changes, it adds complexity and does not provide the same simple global anycast entry point. It is not the most direct solution for global HTTP latency reduction.
- ✓
Deploy the API to GKE clusters in multiple regions and use a global external Application Load Balancer with a single anycast IP address.
Why this is correct
A global external Application Load Balancer provides a single anycast IP and routes each user to the closest healthy backend based on latency and health. By deploying the stateless API in multiple regions behind this load balancer, users in each geography are served from a nearby region, reducing latency without code changes. This is the standard global serving pattern in Google Cloud.
- ✗
Enable Cloud CDN on the existing regional load balancer and cache API responses at the edge.
Why it's wrong here
Cloud CDN caches cacheable content at edge locations, but API responses are often dynamic and personalised, so caching may not be effective or safe. Even if some responses are cacheable, the origin remains in a single region, so cache misses and non-cacheable requests still travel far. This does not reliably reduce latency for all users.
- ✗
Increase the machine type of the GKE nodes in the single region to handle more concurrent requests.
Why it's wrong here
Scaling up the nodes improves capacity but does not reduce network latency for users who are geographically distant. The round-trip time from Asia or Europe to a single region remains high regardless of node size. This addresses throughput, not the latency goal, and does not provide a global presence.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Load Balancing and Autoscaling
Key term
Load balancer
A load balancer is a device or software that distributes incoming network traffic across multiple servers so no single server gets overwhelmed.
Key term
Latency
Latency is the time delay between a request being sent over a network and the response being received, often measured in milliseconds.
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 and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Google Cloud exam blueprint
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.