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
For Compute Engine, taking regular snapshots and creating instances from them in another region meets RPO/RTO. For Cloud SQL, enabling cross-region replication (asynchronous) provides failover capability. Using a single regional managed instance group does not provide DR across regions. Transfer Appliance is for bulk data migration, not DR. A multi-region bucket is for storage but not directly for Compute Engine instances.
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
Transfer Appliance is not suitable for DR with RPO < 1 hour; it's a one-time bulk transfer device.
- ✗
Use a regional managed instance group and rely on Google's automatic failover
Why it's wrong here
Regional managed instance groups provide high availability within a region, not disaster recovery across regions.
- ✓
Store application configuration and scripts in a multi-regional Cloud Storage bucket
Why this is correct
A multi-regional bucket ensures configuration is available globally and can be used to bootstrap instances in the DR region.
- ✓
Configure Cloud SQL cross-region replication to a replica in another region
Why this is correct
Cross-region replication provides automatic failover with low RPO (seconds to minutes).
- ✓
Take regular snapshots of Compute Engine persistent disks and replicate them to another region using Cloud Storage
Why this is correct
Snapshots can be stored in a multi-regional bucket and used to create instances in another region within RTO.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Introduction to Google Cloud Platform
Key term
Regional
Regional refers to a deployment strategy where cloud resources are distributed across multiple geographic areas to improve availability, reduce latency, and meet compliance requirements.
Key term
Compute Engine
Compute Engine is Google Cloud's Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) offering that lets you create and run virtual machines on Google's infrastructure.
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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.