Designing highly scalable, available, and reliable cloud-native applications →easyMultiple SelectObjective-mapped
PCD Practice Question: Designing highly scalable, available, and reliable cloud-native applications
A company is designing a scalable web application on Google Cloud. They expect variable traffic and want to automatically scale resources based on load. Which two services can automatically scale? (Choose two.)
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers confuse unmanaged instance groups with managed instance groups, assuming both support autoscaling, but only managed instance groups have built-in autoscalers.
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
✓
Cloud Run
Cloud Run is a fully managed serverless compute platform that automatically scales your containerized applications based on incoming traffic, including scaling to zero when there is no traffic. This autoscaling is handled by the Knative serving layer, which adjusts the number of container instances based on request concurrency and CPU utilization.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Compute Engine unmanaged instance group
Why it's wrong here
Unmanaged instance groups do not support autoscaling; you must manually manage the instances.
- ✓
Cloud Run
Why this is correct
Cloud Run automatically scales container instances from zero to a maximum based on incoming request volume.
- ✓
Compute Engine managed instance group
Why this is correct
Managed instance groups can be configured with autoscaling policies that adjust the number of instances based on CPU, load, or custom metrics.
- ✗
Cloud Dataproc
Why it's wrong here
Cloud Dataproc can autoscale clusters but is designed for batch and big data processing, not for serving web traffic.
- ✗
Cloud SQL
Why it's wrong here
Cloud SQL does not automatically scale compute resources; read replicas and vertical scaling are manual.
Quick reference
Cloud Service Model Comparison
| Model | You Manage | Provider Manages | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| IaaS | OS, runtime, apps, data | Hardware, hypervisor, networking | EC2, Azure VMs, GCP Compute Engine |
| PaaS | Apps and data | OS, runtime, middleware, hardware | Elastic Beanstalk, Azure App Service |
| SaaS | Data and settings only | Everything else | Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Workday |
| FaaS / Serverless | Function code only | Infra, scaling, runtime | Lambda, Azure Functions, Cloud Run |
| CaaS | Containers and apps | Kubernetes, OS, hardware | EKS, AKS, GKE |
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This PCD 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 PCD exam.