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PCD Practice Question: An application running on GKE is experiencing…
An application running on GKE is experiencing high latency. The team uses Cloud Trace to identify the bottleneck. They notice that a particular service spends most of its time waiting on a database query. How can they optimize performance?
⚠ Common exam trap
Google Cloud often tests the misconception that scaling horizontally (adding replicas) solves all performance issues, but here the bottleneck is external to the service (database), so scaling the service does not reduce the per-query wait time.
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
✓
Optimize the database query and add appropriate indexes
The bottleneck is identified as a database query causing high latency. Optimizing the query and adding appropriate indexes directly reduces the time spent waiting on the database, which is the root cause. Cloud Trace shows the service is waiting on the database, so improving database performance is the most effective solution.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Decrease the number of pods to reduce load
Why it's wrong here
Reducing pods may increase latency due to less capacity.
- ✗
Use Cloud CDN to cache database results
Why it's wrong here
Cloud CDN caches static content, not database responses.
- ✓
Optimize the database query and add appropriate indexes
Why this is correct
Query optimization reduces execution time.
- ✗
Increase the number of replicas for the service
Why it's wrong here
Scaling replicas doesn't speed up slow queries.
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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.