Google PCA Practice Question: Managing and Provisioning a Solution Infrastructure
A media company stores finished video masters in a Cloud Storage bucket. Legal requires that every object be retained for exactly seven years and that no user, including project owners, be able to delete or overwrite an object before that period ends. Which bucket configuration should the architect apply?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse versioning or lifecycle management with true immutability, when only a locked retention policy prevents early deletion by privileged users.
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
✓
Apply a bucket lock with a retention policy of seven years and grant users the Storage Object Creator role.
Immutability for a fixed period is delivered by a bucket retention policy, and locking the bucket makes that policy irreversible so no principal can shorten it or delete protected objects early. Seven years expressed as a retention duration plus restricted write access satisfies the legal hold while still permitting new masters to be uploaded to the bucket.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Enable Uniform Bucket-Level Access and grant the Storage Object Admin role only to the security team.
Why it's wrong here
Uniform Bucket-Level Access simplifies permission management by disabling object ACLs, but it grants no immutability. The security team holding Storage Object Admin could still delete masters at any time, so the bucket would not meet the seven-year retention obligation. This option addresses access consistency rather than the deletion protection the scenario actually demands.
- ✓
Apply a bucket lock with a retention policy of seven years and grant users the Storage Object Creator role.
Why this is correct
A retention policy blocks deletion or replacement of objects until the retention period elapses, and locking the bucket makes the policy permanent so that even a project owner cannot shorten or remove it. Setting the period to seven years satisfies the legal hold exactly, and restricting users to object creation prevents them from altering existing masters while still allowing new uploads.
- ✗
Enable Object Versioning on the bucket and grant users only the Storage Object Viewer role.
Why it's wrong here
Object Versioning preserves noncurrent versions after an overwrite or delete, but it does not prevent deletion; a user with the Storage Object Admin role can still delete the live object and later remove noncurrent versions. Because the requirement forbids any user, including project owners, from deleting data early, versioning alone leaves a clear path to premature removal and fails the legal mandate.
- ✗
Configure a lifecycle rule that moves objects to Archive storage after 30 days and deletes them after 2,555 days.
Why it's wrong here
A lifecycle rule that deletes objects after roughly seven years does not prevent a user from deleting an object on day one. Lifecycle rules are automated housekeeping, not access control, and they cannot override a delete request issued by a principal with sufficient permissions. The legal requirement is protection against early deletion, which a lifecycle rule simply cannot provide.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Cloud SQL and Managed Data Stores
Key term
Cloud storage
Cloud storage is a service that lets you save data on remote servers accessed over the internet instead of on your computer's hard drive.
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 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.