Google PCA Practice Question: Analysing and Optimising Technical and Business Processes
A team is designing a disaster recovery plan for a critical application. They need to ensure RPO of less than 1 hour and RTO of less than 4 hours. The application runs on Compute Engine with persistent disks and uses Cloud SQL for MySQL. Which THREE actions should they take? (Choose 3.)
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
✓
Store application configuration and scripts in a multi-regional Cloud Storage bucket
Option C is correct because storing application configuration and scripts in a multi-regional Cloud Storage bucket ensures they remain available even if one region fails, supporting recovery within the 4-hour RTO without manual rebuild delays. Option D is correct because Cloud SQL cross-region replication continuously replicates the MySQL database to a replica in another region, enabling a low RPO (well under 1 hour) and a fast promotion/failover path to meet the 4-hour RTO. Option E is correct because regular persistent disk snapshots replicated to another region via Cloud Storage provide a restorable copy of Compute Engine disk data in the DR region, which is necessary to rebuild instances within the RTO and keep data loss under the RPO. Option A is not appropriate because Transfer Appliance is an offline, batch data-transfer appliance with weekly cadence, which cannot meet an RPO under 1 hour or an RTO under 4 hours. Option B is not sufficient because a regional managed instance group only provides automatic failover across zones within a single region, not cross-region disaster recovery, so a region-wide outage would still exceed the required RTO/RPO.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Deploy a Transfer Appliance to copy data to another region weekly
Why it's wrong here
Weekly Transfer Appliance shipments give an RPO measured in days, far exceeding the one-hour target. It tempts as a bulk offline migration tool for very large datasets where bandwidth is constrained, but continuous replication or scheduled backups are needed for sub-hour recovery points.
- ✗
Use a regional managed instance group and rely on Google's automatic failover
Why it's wrong here
A regional managed instance group spreads replicas across zones and fails over automatically, but this covers Compute Engine availability only; Cloud SQL for MySQL needs its own regional HA and backup configuration to meet the RPO. It tempts because zone failure is the obvious risk, yet the database tier remains unprotected.
- ✓
Store application configuration and scripts in a multi-regional Cloud Storage bucket
Why this is correct
Multi-regional Cloud Storage provides durable, geo-redundant storage for configuration and deployment scripts, so rebuilds after a regional failure can retrieve them without depending on the failed region. This supports the four-hour RTO by accelerating Compute Engine re-provisioning.
- ✓
Configure Cloud SQL cross-region replication to a replica in another region
Why this is correct
Cloud SQL cross-region replication continuously ships the primary's binary log to a replica in another region, giving an asynchronous replica with lag well under one hour. Promoting that replica during a regional outage satisfies the sub-one-hour RPO for the MySQL database.
- ✓
Take regular snapshots of Compute Engine persistent disks and replicate them to another region using Cloud Storage
Why this is correct
Persistent disk snapshots capture point-in-time block-level state, and replicating them to another region's Cloud Storage makes them retrievable if the source region fails. Restoring disks from these snapshots rebuilds Compute Engine instances, supporting the four-hour RTO.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Cloud SQL and Managed Data Stores
Key term
Cloud SQL
Cloud SQL is a fully managed relational database service that lets you set up, maintain, and scale SQL databases (like MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server) in the cloud without managing the underlying infrastructure.
Key term
RPO
Recovery Point Objective (RPO) is the maximum acceptable amount of data loss measured in time, defining how recent data must be to resume operations after a disruption.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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.