Google PCA Manage and provision cloud infrastructure Practice Question
An organization uses Cloud SQL for MySQL in a production environment. They need to ensure high availability with automatic failover in case of a zonal failure. Which configuration should they use?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse cross-region replication (available for other database engines) with the zonal high-availability feature for Cloud SQL for MySQL, or assume that a read replica can be used for automatic failover when it requires manual promotion.
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
✓
Create a regional Cloud SQL instance with automatic failover.
A regional Cloud SQL instance with automatic failover uses a primary and a standby zone within the same region, with synchronous replication between them. If the primary zone fails, Cloud SQL automatically promotes the standby to primary, ensuring high availability without data loss. This configuration meets the requirement for automatic failover during a zonal failure.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Create a read replica in a different region.
Why it's wrong here
A read replica in another region serves read scaling and cross-region disaster recovery; it cannot be promoted automatically on zonal failure, so the primary's zone loss still causes an outage. It is tempting because replicas do provide a copy of data, but failover remains manual.
- ✓
Create a regional Cloud SQL instance with automatic failover.
Why this is correct
A regional instance replicates synchronously across two zones in the same region and promotes the standby automatically on zonal failure, satisfying the automatic failover requirement. A zonal instance offers no standby, so it cannot meet the stated high-availability constraint.
- ✗
Export the database daily and import into a new instance if failure occurs.
Why it's wrong here
Daily export and import is a backup and recovery method with hours of data loss and manual intervention, not automatic failover. It suits disaster recovery or migration between instances, whereas a regional instance with a standby replica provides the required zonal resilience.
- ✗
Deploy Cloud SQL across multiple regions using cross-region replication.
Why it's wrong here
Cross-region replication asynchronously copies data to another region for disaster recovery, not zonal failover; it provides no automatic failover and no standby instance in a second zone. It is tempting because it protects against region-wide outages, which is a different requirement from the zonal resilience described here.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Google Cloud Resource Hierarchy and Organization
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
Data
Data is raw, unprocessed information, like numbers, words, or measurements, that can be stored, processed, and analyzed by computers.
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