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PCD Practice Question: Designing highly scalable, available, and reliable cloud-native applications
A company is designing a web application that must scale horizontally to handle variable traffic. Which two practices should they implement to ensure the application is stateless and can scale without issues?
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
✓
Offload session state to the user's browser using encrypted cookies.
To achieve statelessness, session state should either be stored in an external cache (e.g., Memorystore) or offloaded to the client (e.g., using cookies). Sticky sessions tie a client to a specific instance, preventing scaling. Using a database like Cloud SQL for session persistence creates a bottleneck. Regional managed instance groups improve availability but do not directly address statelessness.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Persist session data in Cloud SQL to ensure durability.
Why it's wrong here
Using a relational database for session storage introduces latency and a single point of failure; it is not a stateless design pattern.
- ✓
Offload session state to the user's browser using encrypted cookies.
Why this is correct
Storing session data on the client side through cookies eliminates server-side state, making the application fully stateless.
- ✗
Deploy the application across multiple regional managed instance groups.
Why it's wrong here
Regional MIGs enhance availability and resilience, but they do not address the statelessness requirement.
- ✓
Store session state in an external cache such as Memorystore.
Why this is correct
External caching separates session data from compute, enabling any instance to handle requests and facilitating stateless scaling.
- ✗
Use sticky sessions to maintain client affinity.
Why it's wrong here
Sticky sessions couple a client to a specific backend instance, hindering horizontal scaling and fault tolerance.
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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.