Managing Implementation and Ensuring Solution and Operations Reliability →mediumMultiple ChoiceObjective-mapped
Google PCA Practice Question: Managing Implementation and Ensuring Solution and Operations Reliability
Your company has a production Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL instance in us-central1 with automated backups enabled. You need to ensure that if the zone fails, the database automatically fails over to a standby in a different zone with minimal downtime. 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
✓
Configure the instance as a highly available (regional) instance.
Cloud SQL high availability (HA) configuration creates a standby instance in a different zone. The primary and standby use synchronous replication, and automatic failover occurs if the primary zone fails. Enabling deletion protection does not provide HA. Read replicas are for read scaling, not automatic failover. Automated backups alone do not provide failover.
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 deletion protection on the instance.
Why it's wrong here
Deletion protection prevents accidental deletion but does not provide failover.
- ✗
Create a cross-region read replica and manually promote it during a failure.
Why it's wrong here
Read replicas are for read scaling; manual promotion is not automatic failover and has longer downtime.
- ✓
Configure the instance as a highly available (regional) instance.
Why this is correct
HA configuration creates a standby in a different zone and enables automatic failover.
- ✗
Enable point-in-time recovery (PITR) and keep 30 days of transaction logs.
Why it's wrong here
PITR allows restoring to a point in time but does not provide automatic failover.
Visual reference
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Related to this question
Learn chapter
Introduction to Google Cloud Platform
Key term
High availability
High availability is a system design approach that aims to keep applications and services operational and accessible with minimal downtime, even when some components fail.
Key term
Cloud SQL
Cloud SQL is a fully managed relational database service that lets you set up, maintain, and scale SQL databases (like MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server) in the cloud without managing the underlying infrastructure.
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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.