Google PCA Ensure solution and operations reliability Practice Question
You are responsible for a Cloud Run service that experiences occasional cold starts, causing increased latency. You want to minimize cold starts while keeping costs under control. What should you do?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is thinking that increasing the maximum instances or CPU will prevent cold starts, but cold starts are only mitigated by keeping instances warm via minimum instances.
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
✓
Set the minimum number of instances to a value greater than zero.
To minimize cold starts in Cloud Run, set the minimum number of instances to a value greater than zero. This keeps a baseline of warm instances ready to serve requests, reducing latency. Increasing the maximum instances or CPU limit does not prevent cold starts, and a larger container image would exacerbate them.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Set the minimum number of instances to a value greater than zero.
Why this is correct
Setting the minimum number of instances ensures that at least that many instances are always running, eliminating cold starts for the baseline traffic. You can set it to a low value, such as 1 or 2, to balance cost and performance. This is the recommended approach to reduce cold starts while controlling costs.
- ✗
Increase the maximum number of instances.
Why it's wrong here
Increasing the maximum number of instances allows the service to scale out further during high traffic, but it does not prevent cold starts for new instances. Cold starts occur when a new instance is created, regardless of the maximum limit. This setting does not address the latency issue.
- ✗
Use a larger container image.
Why it's wrong here
A larger container image increases the time to pull and start the container, which can worsen cold starts. To reduce cold starts, you should optimize the image size, not increase it. A larger image also consumes more storage and may increase deployment time.
- ✗
Deploy the service with a higher CPU limit.
Why it's wrong here
A higher CPU limit may speed up the startup process slightly, but it does not eliminate cold starts. Cold starts are caused by the need to initialize a new instance, and CPU allocation is only one factor. Increasing CPU also increases cost, and it does not guarantee that instances remain warm.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
IAM Policies, Service Accounts, and Auditing
Key term
Cloud Run
Cloud Run is a fully managed compute platform from Google Cloud that lets you run containerized applications in a serverless environment, automatically scaling from zero to thousands of requests.
Key term
Latency
Latency is the time delay between a request being sent over a network and the response being received, often measured in milliseconds.
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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.