Google PCA Practice Question: Managing and Provisioning a Solution Infrastructure
Which GCP service provides distributed tracing to help analyze latency in microservices applications?
⚠ Common exam trap
PCA often tests the difference between observability tools — candidates confuse Cloud Trace (distributed tracing) with Cloud Profiler (code profiling) or Cloud Monitoring (metrics) when the question specifically asks for latency analysis across microservices.
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
✓
Cloud Trace
Cloud Trace is Google Cloud's distributed tracing service, designed to collect latency data across microservices and display it as traces and spans. It helps identify performance bottlenecks in distributed applications. Cloud Profiler, Logging, and Monitoring serve different observability roles and do not provide distributed tracing.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Cloud Profiler
Why it's wrong here
Cloud Profiler samples CPU and heap usage to attribute resource consumption to code, not to trace requests across services. It is tempting because both aid performance diagnosis, but Profiler suits optimising a single service's resource hotspots, whereas distributed tracing follows a request's path across microservices.
- ✓
Cloud Trace
Why this is correct
Cloud Trace collects and correlates latency data across microservice calls, producing distributed traces that pinpoint slow spans in request paths. This directly satisfies the need to analyse latency in microservices applications, unlike logging or monitoring services that lack span-level tracing.
- ✗
Cloud Logging
Why it's wrong here
Cloud Logging records discrete log entries and events; it does not stitch spans into a request-level trace across services. It is tempting because logs can be correlated manually, but distributed tracing requires span propagation and a trace view, which Cloud Trace provides for microservice latency analysis.
- ✗
Cloud Monitoring
Why it's wrong here
Cloud Monitoring collects metrics, dashboards and alerts; distributed tracing of individual request paths across microservices is handled by Cloud Trace. Monitoring is tempting because it also surfaces latency data, but it aggregates metrics rather than following a single request through each service hop.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
IAM Policies, Service Accounts, and Auditing
Key term
Service
A service is a software component or system that performs a specific function and is available to be used by other programs or users over a network.
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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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.