Designing highly scalable, available, and reliable cloud-native applications →easyMultiple ChoiceObjective-mapped
PCD Practice Question: Designing highly scalable, available, and reliable cloud-native applications
An organization wants to design a serverless data processing pipeline that is highly available and can automatically scale based on the number of incoming requests. The pipeline processes JSON messages from a Cloud Pub/Sub topic and writes results to BigQuery. Which service should be used as the compute component?
⚠ Common exam trap
The PCD exam often tests the distinction between serverless compute services (Cloud Run vs Cloud Functions) by focusing on execution time limits and concurrency; the trap here is that candidates choose Cloud Functions for its simplicity, overlooking the 9-minute timeout and lack of support for long-running or high-concurrency workloads that Cloud Run handles natively.
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 the correct compute component because it is a fully managed serverless platform that automatically scales from zero based on incoming HTTP requests, supports event-driven processing via Pub/Sub push subscriptions, and integrates natively with BigQuery. It provides high availability by default across zones and can handle burst traffic without provisioning overhead, making it ideal for a serverless pipeline that processes JSON messages and writes results to BigQuery.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Cloud Dataflow
Why it's wrong here
Overkill for simple message processing; better for complex stream processing.
- ✓
Cloud Run
Why this is correct
Cloud Run provides automatic scaling, can be triggered via Pub/Sub push, and supports longer processing times.
- ✗
Cloud Functions
Why it's wrong here
Cloud Functions can work but Cloud Run offers better concurrency and longer timeouts for this use case.
- ✗
Compute Engine with managed instance groups
Why it's wrong here
Not serverless; requires manual scaling configuration.
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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This PCD question is part of Courseiva's 964-question bank — original exam-style content with full explanations and wrong-answer analysis, never real exam questions or exam dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
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.