hardMultiple Choice
Google PCA Practice Question: A media company uses Cloud CDN with an HTTP(S)…
A media company uses Cloud CDN with an HTTP(S) Load Balancer to serve video content from Cloud Storage. After a month, they notice increased costs due to high cache miss rates. Analysis shows that many requests include a unique query parameter for analytics tracking. What is the most effective way to improve cache hit ratio while preserving analytics data?
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
✓
Configure a custom cache key on the backend bucket to exclude the analytics parameter
When query parameters are unique per request (like tracking IDs), they cause cache misses. The solution is to define a cache key that ignores that specific parameter, so the same content is cached once. Setting a custom cache key on the backend bucket is the correct approach. Disabling CDN or increasing TTL does not solve the parameter issue. Removing caching altogether would hurt performance and increase egress costs.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Configure a custom cache key on the backend bucket to exclude the analytics parameter
Why this is correct
A custom cache key lets the backend bucket ignore the analytics query parameter when computing the cache key, so requests differing only by tracking value share one cached object. Hit ratio rises while the parameter still reaches analytics logging.
- ✗
Move the content to a different Cloud Storage bucket with no caching
Why it's wrong here
Moving content to a bucket with caching disabled removes Cloud CDN's edge caching entirely, so all requests reach the origin and costs rise. This suits private or rapidly changing objects that must not be cached, not video content where edge caching is the goal.
- ✗
Increase the minimum TTL on the backend bucket to 1 hour
Why it's wrong here
Raising the minimum TTL cannot help because Cloud CDN caches each unique query string as a separate object, so every analytics parameter still produces a distinct cache entry and a miss. TTL tuning suits stable, repeatedly requested objects, not per-request URL variation.
- ✗
Disable caching for requests with query parameters
Why it's wrong here
Disabling caching for parameterised requests forces every analytics-tagged fetch to hit the origin, worsening both miss rate and cost. It would suit genuinely dynamic, user-specific responses that must never be served stale, not static video content needing a higher hit ratio.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Data Migration and Transfer Services
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
Caching
Caching is the process of storing copies of frequently accessed data in a temporary storage location, known as a cache, so that future requests for that data can be served faster and with less computational effort.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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