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?
⚠ Common exam trap
PCA often tests the difference between HA (automatic zone failover) and read replicas (manual promotion for DR) — candidates pick the cross-region replica thinking it provides automatic failover, but it requires manual intervention.
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.
Configuring the Cloud SQL instance as a highly available (regional) instance provisions a standby in a different zone within the same region and automatically fails over during a zone failure with minimal downtime. This is the native HA mechanism for Cloud SQL and directly satisfies the requirement.
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 only blocks accidental instance removal; it provides no standby and no failover mechanism. It is the right choice when guarding against an operator or script deleting a production instance, not when the requirement is automatic zonal failover.
- ✗
Create a cross-region read replica and manually promote it during a failure.
Why it's wrong here
A cross-region read replica requires manual promotion, so failover is neither automatic nor minimal-downtime, and it sits in another region rather than a second zone. It is the right choice for regional disaster recovery or read offloading, not zonal high availability.
- ✓
Configure the instance as a highly available (regional) instance.
Why this is correct
Configuring a highly available (regional) instance provisions a standby in a different zone within the same region, with automatic failover and synchronous replication. This satisfies the stem's requirement for automatic zone-failure failover with minimal downtime, which a single-zone instance with backups alone cannot provide.
- ✗
Enable point-in-time recovery (PITR) and keep 30 days of transaction logs.
Why it's wrong here
PITR restores data to a past timestamp from transaction logs; it does not provision a standby or trigger automatic failover. It is the right choice for recovering from accidental deletion or corruption, not for surviving a zone outage with minimal downtime.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Key term
Regional
Regional refers to a deployment strategy where cloud resources are distributed across multiple geographic areas to improve availability, reduce latency, and meet compliance requirements.
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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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.