Google PCA Practice Question: Managing Implementation and Ensuring Solution and Operations Reliability
Your organization stores critical financial data in Cloud Storage. You need to ensure that if an object is deleted or overwritten, you can recover it within 30 days. What feature should you enable?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap is confusing Bucket Lock retention policies (which prevent deletion for compliance) with versioning (which enables recovery after deletion or overwrite) — candidates often pick the retention policy because it mentions '30 days' matching the requirement.
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 object versioning on the bucket
Object versioning preserves every version of an object, including prior versions created before an overwrite and the last version before deletion. When an object is deleted, a delete marker is placed, but the underlying versions remain recoverable. This directly satisfies the requirement to recover deleted or overwritten objects within 30 days.
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 a retention policy with a 30-day retention period
Why it's wrong here
A plain retention policy blocks deletion or overwrite during the period but provides no mechanism to restore an object already deleted or replaced. It tempts because retention sounds like recoverability, and would be correct where the requirement is preventing removal rather than recovering deleted objects.
- ✗
Configure lifecycle management to delete objects after 30 days
Why it's wrong here
Lifecycle management deletes objects after 30 days, destroying the data rather than preserving recoverability. It tempts because lifecycle rules do govern object age and cost, and would be correct where the requirement is automatic deletion of stale data, not recovery after deletion or overwrite.
- ✓
Enable object versioning on the bucket
Why this is correct
Object versioning retains prior generations of each object, so deleted or overwritten data remains recoverable within the bucket's retention window. This directly satisfies the 30-day recovery requirement for critical financial data without relying on separate backup copies.
- ✗
Enable Bucket Lock with a retention policy
Why it's wrong here
Bucket Lock prevents deletion or overwriting for the retention period; it does not let you recover an object once deleted. It tempts because retention guards financial data against tampering, and would be correct where the requirement is immutability or WORM compliance rather than 30-day recovery.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Cloud Storage: Objects and Buckets
Key term
Data
Data is raw, unprocessed information, like numbers, words, or measurements, that can be stored, processed, and analyzed by computers.
Key term
Cloud storage
Cloud storage is a service that lets you save data on remote servers accessed over the internet instead of on your computer's hard drive.
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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.