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Google PCA Practice Question: Managing Implementation and Ensuring Solution and Operations Reliability

You are designing a disaster recovery plan for a Cloud SQL for MySQL instance. The instance is in us-east1. You need to be able to recover the database to a specific second in time within the past 7 days in the event of a regional outage. What should you do?

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

Enable point-in-time recovery and create a cross-region read replica. If needed, promote and recover the replica to the desired point in time.

Cloud SQL point-in-time recovery (PITR) allows recovery to any second within the backup retention period. For regional disaster recovery, you need cross-region replicas. Enabling PITR on the primary and creating a cross-region replica (which also supports PITR) allows you to recover the replica to a specific point in time. Automated backups alone cannot restore to a specific second.

Answer analysis

Option-by-option breakdown

For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.

  • Enable automated backups and transaction log retention for 7 days. Restore the backup in a new instance in a different region.

    Why it's wrong here

    Automated backups are daily; you cannot restore to a specific second within the day.

  • Use Cloud SQL's built-in replication to create a cross-region replica, and enable failover. Failover automatically recovers to the latest transaction.

    Why it's wrong here

    Failover recovers to the latest available state, not a specific point in time.

  • Enable point-in-time recovery and create a cross-region read replica. If needed, promote and recover the replica to the desired point in time.

    Why this is correct

    PITR on the primary logs changes; the cross-region replica can be promoted and recovered to a specific second.

  • Export the database daily using gcloud sql export and store in Cloud Storage with versioning.

    Why it's wrong here

    Exports are point-in-time snapshots; you cannot recover to an arbitrary second.

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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.