Google PCA Design and plan a cloud solution architecture Practice Question
A healthcare company is designing a solution to ingest and process millions of patient records daily. The data must be stored in a way that supports SQL queries and also allows for real-time analytics. The company wants to minimize operational overhead and needs a fully managed, petabyte-scale data warehouse. Which Google Cloud service should the solutions architect recommend?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is assuming that any managed database with SQL support can serve as a petabyte-scale data warehouse, when BigQuery is specifically designed for that purpose while others are optimized for transactional or NoSQL workloads.
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
✓
BigQuery.
BigQuery is a serverless, highly scalable data warehouse that supports SQL and real-time analytics. It is fully managed, so the healthcare company can focus on analyzing data rather than managing infrastructure. It handles petabyte-scale datasets and daily ingestion of millions of records without manual scaling, making it the best fit for the requirements.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Cloud Spanner.
Why it's wrong here
Cloud Spanner is a globally distributed, horizontally scalable relational database that supports SQL, but it is designed for transactional workloads, not petabyte-scale analytics. It can handle high throughput but is more expensive and not optimized for large-scale analytical queries. Using Spanner for data warehousing would be cost-prohibitive and not minimize operational overhead for analytics.
- ✗
Cloud Bigtable.
Why it's wrong here
Cloud Bigtable is a NoSQL wide-column database suitable for high-throughput workloads but does not support SQL queries natively. It is not a data warehouse and lacks the SQL analytics capabilities required. While it scales to petabytes, it would not satisfy the need for SQL querying and real-time analytics in a familiar SQL environment.
- ✓
BigQuery.
Why this is correct
BigQuery is a fully managed, petabyte-scale data warehouse that supports ANSI SQL and real-time analytics through streaming inserts. It requires no infrastructure management, aligning with the goal of minimizing operational overhead. It can ingest millions of records daily and scale seamlessly, making it ideal for the healthcare company's requirements.
- ✗
Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL.
Why it's wrong here
Cloud SQL is a managed relational database but is not designed for petabyte-scale data warehousing or real-time analytics on massive datasets. It has storage limits and would require sharding or manual scaling for millions of records daily. This would increase operational overhead and not meet the petabyte-scale requirement.
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
Data
Data is raw, unprocessed information, like numbers, words, or measurements, that can be stored, processed, and analyzed by computers.
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.
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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.