Google PCA Ensure solution and operations reliability Practice Question
You are responsible for incident management for a production service. You want to reduce manual toil during the initial response to common issues like high latency. What is the best approach?
⚠ Common exam trap
Google Cloud often tests the distinction between 'alerting' (which still requires manual action) and 'automated remediation' (which reduces toil), so candidates mistakenly choose options that provide visibility or documentation instead of automation.
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
✓
Use Cloud Monitoring to trigger a Cloud Function that performs automated checks and rolls back the last deployment if latency spikes.
It directly reduces manual toil by automating the initial response to common issues like high latency. Cloud Monitoring triggers a Cloud Function that performs automated checks and, if latency spikes, rolls back the last deployment, eliminating the need for human intervention during the critical first response phase.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Use Cloud Monitoring to trigger a Cloud Function that performs automated checks and rolls back the last deployment if latency spikes.
Why this is correct
Cloud Monitoring alerting policies detect the latency spike and invoke a Cloud Function that runs automated diagnostics and rolls back the last deployment, removing manual toil from initial response. This closed-loop remediation satisfies the stem's requirement to automate first response to common incidents.
- ✗
Set up Cloud Monitoring alerts with email notifications to the on-call engineer.
Why it's wrong here
Email alerts merely notify a human, who must still diagnose and act manually, so toil is unchanged. Alerting is tempting because it detects the latency condition, and would be right if the goal were awareness rather than automated remediation of recurring issues.
- ✗
Create detailed runbooks and require the on-call to follow them step by step.
Why it's wrong here
Runbooks still require the on-call engineer to execute every step by hand, so manual toil persists. They are tempting because documented procedures standardise response and reduce errors, and would be correct where judgement-heavy incidents cannot be safely automated.
- ✗
Enable Cloud Logging and set up a custom dashboard for the on-call.
Why it's wrong here
Logging and dashboards only surface data for a human to interpret, adding investigation work rather than removing it. They are tempting because observability is essential for diagnosing latency, and would be correct if the aim were root-cause analysis instead of reducing repetitive response effort.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Billing, Budgets, and Cost Management
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.
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.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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