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Deploying applications

Practise Google Professional Cloud Developer Deploying applications practice questions — original exam-style scenarios with answer choices, explanations, and analysis of common mistakes.

88 questions25 easy36 medium27 hard

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What to know about Deploying applications

Deploying applications questions test whether you can apply the concept in context, not just recognise a definition.

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How to eliminate plausible but wrong options.

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Common Deploying applications exam traps

  • Answering from memory before reading the full scenario.
  • Missing a constraint such as cost, availability, security, scope or command context.
  • Choosing a broad answer when the question asks for the most specific fix.
  • Ignoring why the wrong options are tempting.

Question index

All Deploying applications questions (88)

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1

A team deploys a containerized web application on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) using a Deployment. They need to expose the application externally via a stable IP address and enable SSL termination. Which resource should they use?

Easy
2

A company has a multi-region Cloud Run service with traffic splitting between revisions. They notice that a newly rolled-out revision is receiving 0% of traffic even though they set traffic to 100% via the console. The revision shows 'Ready: Yes'. What is the most likely cause?

Hard
3

A startup wants to deploy a web application on App Engine standard environment. They need to handle sudden traffic spikes automatically. How should they configure scaling?

Easy
4

Which TWO features are provided by Google Cloud Deploy? (Choose 2.)

Easy
5

A company deploys a stateful application using StatefulSets on GKE. They need to store persistent data on regional persistent disks for high availability. However, during zonal failures, pods are not rescheduled quickly. What is the best approach to improve recovery time?

Hard
6

Which THREE methods are valid ways to deploy a containerized application to Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)?

Hard
7

A developer uses this Cloud Build configuration to deploy to Cloud Run. The build succeeds but the deployment fails with an error that the service account lacks permission. What is the most likely missing permission?

Hard
8

A company runs a Java microservice on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) using a standard cluster with 3 nodes. They use Cloud Build to build the Docker image and push it to Artifact Registry, then apply a Kubernetes Deployment manifest that references the new image tag. The Deployment has a rolling update strategy with maxSurge=1 and maxUnavailable=0. After a recent deployment, the new pods crash with 'CrashLoopBackOff'. The old pods are still running successfully. The application logs show a connection refused error when trying to connect to a Cloud SQL instance. The Cloud SQL instance is in the same project and region. The GKE cluster nodes have the appropriate scopes to access Cloud SQL. The application uses a Cloud SQL proxy sidecar container to establish the connection. The previous deployment worked fine. What is the most likely cause of the failure?

Hard
9

A company is deploying a containerized application on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE). The development team has built a Docker image and pushed it to Artifact Registry. They want to automate the deployment process so that whenever a new image is pushed to the registry, the application is automatically updated in the GKE cluster. Which combination of services should they use to achieve this?

Medium
10

A team is deploying a new version of an application on GKE using a rolling update. They want to ensure that the update proceeds only if the new pods are healthy. Which two steps should they include? (Choose two.)

Medium
11

A company wants to automate the deployment of a microservice application to Cloud Run using Cloud Build. They want to ensure zero-downtime deployments and traffic migration. Which three features should they utilize? (Choose three.)

Hard
12

Your company is deploying a web application on Cloud Run using a continuous deployment pipeline from Cloud Build. The application is built as a Docker container and pushed to Container Registry. The Cloud Run service is configured with the '--no-allow-unauthenticated' flag. You have set up Cloud Build triggers to build and deploy on commits to the main branch. The deployment works correctly for the first few commits, but after adding a new environment variable in the Cloud Build configuration file (cloudbuild.yaml), the deployment fails with an error that the Cloud Run service cannot be updated because the new revision fails health checks. The application code has not changed. What is the most likely cause?

Medium
13

Which THREE common issues cause deployment failures on App Engine? (Choose 3.)

Hard
14

You are setting up Cloud Build to automatically deploy a container to Cloud Run when code is pushed to the main branch of a GitHub repository. What is the minimal configuration required?

Easy
15

Which TWO security best practices should be implemented when using Cloud Build to deploy applications? (Choose 2.)

Medium
16

A startup is deploying a Node.js application on App Engine Standard Environment. They have configured the application in app.yaml with runtime: nodejs16. After deploying with gcloud app deploy, the deployment succeeds, but when they access the application, they get a 502 Bad Gateway error. They check the logs and see "Failed to start container" and "Error: Cannot find module 'express'". The application uses Express. The team has confirmed that the package.json file includes express as a dependency. What is the most likely cause?

Easy
17

Which TWO best practices should be followed when deploying a containerized application to Cloud Run for production?

Medium
18

A developer runs the command above. What is the effect of the --promote flag in this deployment?

Easy
19

A company is deploying a batch job that runs once a day on Compute Engine. They are using a startup script to install dependencies and run the job. The job writes output to Cloud Storage. Recently, the job started failing intermittently with "No space left on device" errors, even though the persistent disk has 100 GB free. The team has verified that the disk is not fragmented and that the inode usage is low. The job processes large files and creates many temporary files in /tmp. They suspect the /tmp directory is filling up. What is the most likely cause?

Medium
20

A company deploys a stateful application on GKE using a StatefulSet with PersistentVolumeClaims (PVCs). After a node failure, the pod is rescheduled to another node but the PVC remains in 'Pending' state. What is the most likely reason?

Hard
21

A developer is deploying a Python web application to App Engine Flexible Environment. The application requires a specific third-party binary that is not pre-installed on the runtime image. Which two steps should the developer take to ensure the binary is available? (Choose two.)

Medium
22

A developer wants to deploy a Cloud Function that connects to a Cloud SQL database. What is the simplest way to securely inject database credentials?

Easy
23

A company is deploying a microservices architecture on Google Cloud using Cloud Run. They need to ensure that services can communicate securely with each other and with other Google Cloud services, such as Cloud Storage and Secret Manager. Which three steps should they take? (Choose three.)

Hard
24

During a rolling update, the new pods are failing to start because they require more memory than available on nodes. What is the most likely cause?

Easy
25

A developer deployed the Kubernetes Deployment shown. The application takes about 45 seconds to fully initialize and respond on the /healthz endpoint. What problem will occur with this configuration?

Hard
26

You are deploying a stateful application to GKE. The deployment fails with an error: 'pods failed to fit in any node due to insufficient CPU'. The cluster has 3 nodes with 4 vCPUs each. The deployment requests 2 vCPUs per pod with 5 replicas. What is the most likely issue?

Hard
27

A developer needs to deploy a Python application to App Engine flexible environment. The application requires a specific version of a system package (libssl-dev) that is not included in the default runtime image. How should the developer install this package?

Medium
28

A startup wants to deploy a Python web application with low traffic and minimal operational overhead. They need to automatically scale down to zero when not in use. Which compute option should they choose?

Easy
29

A developer is deploying an application on Compute Engine and needs to automatically apply security patches without downtime. The application runs behind a TCP load balancer. What is the best deployment strategy?

Hard
30

During a deployment to App Engine flexible environment, the new version fails to start and the logs show 'Container failed to start: context deadline exceeded'. The previous version remains serving traffic. What is the most likely cause?

Medium
31

A company is deploying a containerized application on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE). The deployment uses a Service of type LoadBalancer. After creating the Service, the external IP remains pending for several minutes. The team has verified that the cluster has sufficient node capacity and that the pod is running. What is the most likely cause?

Medium
32

Refer to the exhibit. A Cloud Build pipeline that deploys a Cloud Run service fails with the above error. The Cloud Build service account has the roles/run.admin role at the project level. What is the most likely cause?

Medium
33

A company deploys a web app on Cloud Run and configures a custom domain mapping with a managed SSL certificate. After mapping, the domain returns 404 errors. The Cloud Run service is accessible via its default URL. What is the most likely issue?

Medium
34

An organization runs a stateful application on GKE that uses PersistentVolumes. They want to perform a rolling update of the application without disrupting the underlying persistent data. What should they use?

Hard
35

A team is deploying a microservice application on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE). They want to ensure high availability and minimize downtime during rolling updates. Which TWO actions should they take? (Choose two.)

Hard
36

Which TWO of the following are best practices when deploying applications on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE)?

Medium
37

You need to deploy a critical update to a production service on GKE with zero downtime. Which deployment strategy should you use?

Medium
38

A team is deploying a microservice on Cloud Run that requires environment variables with sensitive information, such as database passwords. What is the recommended way to provide these secrets?

Easy
39

A developer wants to deploy a containerized application to Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and ensure that new pods are automatically created if an existing pod fails. Which Kubernetes resource should be used?

Easy
40

A company deploys a containerized application to Cloud Run using Cloud Build. They want to implement a rolling update strategy with zero downtime. Which two actions should they take? (Choose two.)

Easy
41

A company is migrating a monolithic Java application to Cloud Run. The application takes 10 minutes to start. What is the best deployment approach?

Easy
42

Drag and drop the steps to deploy a containerized application to Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) in the correct order.

Medium
43

Which THREE practices should be followed when deploying a containerized application to Cloud Run?

Medium
44

A team wants to deploy infrastructure as code on Google Cloud. They need a declarative language that supports modularity and state management. Which tool should they choose?

Easy
45

Your Cloud Run service experiences high latency during traffic spikes. You need to reduce p95 latency without over-provisioning. Which action should you take?

Hard
46

You are deploying a Python Cloud Function using the Google Cloud CLI. The deployment fails with 'ERROR: (gcloud.functions.deploy) ResponseError: status=[404], code=[OK], message=[The function ... does not exist]' but the function already exists. What is the most likely cause?

Hard
47

A developer is deploying a Node.js application to App Engine flexible environment. They need to install custom dependencies and run startup scripts. Which two configuration elements should they define in the app.yaml? (Choose two.)

Easy
48

A team is deploying a containerized application to Google Kubernetes Engine using a Deployment and a Service of type LoadBalancer. The application is a web server that should be accessible on port 80. After deployment, the external IP is assigned, but when they try to access http://<EXTERNAL_IP>:80, they get a connection timeout. The pods are running, and the logs show the web server is listening on port 8080. The team has verified that the cluster firewall rules allow traffic on port 80. They have also confirmed that the pods are healthy and no network policies are in place. What is the most likely cause?

Medium
49

Match each Cloud CDN feature to its benefit.

Medium
50

A company is migrating a legacy Java application to Cloud Run. The application requires a specific Java version (Java 11) and writes temporary files to disk. The application also uses a proprietary library that is not available in public repositories. The team has created a Dockerfile that installs Java 11, copies the JAR file, and sets the entrypoint. They are using Cloud Build to build the container and deploying to Cloud Run. The deployment succeeds, but when they send requests, the application fails with a "Permission denied" error when trying to write to /tmp. The team has verified that the Cloud Run service has the correct permissions via a service account. They have also checked that the filesystem is writable at /tmp by default. What is the most likely cause of the error?

Hard
51

A company is deploying a microservices architecture on GKE. They need to expose a set of related microservices under a single external IP address with path-based routing. Which Kubernetes resource should they use?

Hard
52

You are deploying a Cassandra database on GKE. Which resource type should you use to ensure stable network identities and persistent storage per pod?

Medium
53

A developer deploys a service on Cloud Run with a concurrency setting of 1. The service makes external API calls. Under heavy load, the service starts returning 503 errors. What is the most likely cause?

Medium
54

You are deploying a Node.js application on Cloud Run. The container image is stored in Artifact Registry. After deploying with gcloud run deploy, the revision fails with 'Container failed to start. Failed to start and then listen on the port defined by the PORT environment variable.' The application listens on port 8080 by default. The Dockerfile uses EXPOSE 8080. The Cloud Run service is configured with container port 8080. You have verified that the container starts locally using docker run -p 8080:8080. What is the most likely cause of the startup failure?

Medium
55

A company uses Cloud Build for CI/CD. They need to deploy a containerized app to Cloud Run automatically on every push to the main branch. Which Cloud Build configuration step is necessary?

Medium
56

A company is deploying a static website on Cloud Storage with a custom domain. They want to serve the website over HTTPS. They have created a bucket with the same name as the domain and uploaded the files. They have verified the domain ownership in Search Console and added the bucket as a CNAME record in their DNS. Users report that when they navigate to the domain, they get a 404 error. The company has verified that the bucket's main page suffix is set to index.html. The team is confident the files are uploaded correctly. They need to resolve the 404 error and serve the site over HTTPS. What should they do?

Easy
57

A developer deploys a Cloud Function (2nd gen) that processes messages from Pub/Sub. The function sometimes fails with 'Deadline Exceeded' for messages that take longer than 9 minutes. What should the developer do to handle these long-running messages without losing them?

Hard
58

Refer to the exhibit. A developer is deploying a container to Cloud Run and receives the error shown. What is the most likely cause?

Easy
59

A team uses Cloud Build to automatically deploy a Cloud Function on push to a repository. The build fails intermittently with 'PERMISSION_DENIED' when executing gcloud functions deploy. What is the most likely cause?

Medium
60

Match each IAM role to its description.

Medium
61

A developer is deploying a Cloud Run service that needs to access a Cloud SQL instance. The service is deployed with the --no-allow-unauthenticated flag. What is the recommended way to grant the service access to the database?

Medium
62

An application running on Compute Engine instances behind a Cloud Load Balancer experiences intermittent 502 errors. The health checks pass but sometimes requests time out. What is the most likely cause?

Medium
63

Drag and drop the steps to set up a Firestore database in native mode in the correct order.

Medium
64

A developer is troubleshooting a deployment on Cloud Run. The service fails with 'Container failed to start' error. The container image is built from a Dockerfile that uses CMD ['npm', 'start']. What is the most likely cause?

Medium
65

A developer runs the above command to build and push a container image to Container Registry, but receives the error shown. The developer has the 'Cloud Build Editor' role on the project. What is the most likely cause of the error?

Hard
66

A developer wants to deploy a Compute Engine instance using Terraform. They want to run a startup script to install software. How should they provide the script?

Easy
67

Which THREE are valid methods for authenticating a user or service when deploying a Cloud Function via the Google Cloud SDK? (Choose 3)

Hard
68

Which TWO strategies can be used to reduce cold start latency in Cloud Run? (Choose 2)

Medium
69

A company wants to deploy a containerized application on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) with zero downtime during updates. The application is stateless and runs on a Deployment with 5 replicas. Which deployment strategy should be used?

Easy
70

A developer runs the above command and receives the error. What is the most likely cause?

Medium
71

A developer needs to deploy a Cloud Run service from a container image in Artifact Registry. What IAM role should be granted to the Cloud Run service account?

Easy
72

A company deploys a containerized web application to Cloud Run. The application needs to access a Cloud SQL instance but fails with a connection timeout. The VPC connector is configured and attached to the Cloud Run service. What is the most likely cause?

Medium
73

A DevOps engineer is automating deployments to Compute Engine using a CI/CD pipeline. They want to minimize downtime and ensure that if a new VM fails health checks, the old VM continues serving. Which deployment strategy should they implement?

Medium
74

Which TWO statements about Cloud Run for Anthos are correct? (Choose 2)

Easy
75

A developer is deploying a microservice on GKE that needs to be accessible only from within the same VPC network. The microservice must have a stable, internal IP address that does not change when pods are updated. Which options should be used?

Hard
76

A company has a monolithic application that needs to be migrated to Cloud Run. The application currently writes logs to a local file. What is the best practice for handling logs in Cloud Run?

Medium
77

You deployed a microservice on Cloud Run. Users report intermittent 503 errors. The service uses Cloud SQL with connection pooling. What is the most likely cause?

Medium
78

Which TWO statements about deploying applications on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) are correct?

Hard
79

Your company runs a multi-tier application on GKE. The frontend is a Deployment with 5 replicas, backend is a StatefulSet with 3 replicas, and a database runs on Cloud SQL. Recently, after a cluster upgrade, the frontend pods are failing with 'Connection refused' errors when trying to reach the backend service. The backend pods are running and healthy. You have verified that the Service and Endpoints objects exist. The backend service is of type ClusterIP on port 8080, and the frontend uses the service name 'backend-svc'. The frontend pods are in a different namespace 'frontend-ns', while the backend is in 'backend-ns'. What is the most likely cause of the error?

Hard
80

Which TWO Google Cloud services are suitable for deploying serverless applications that scale automatically based on demand?

Easy
81

A team deploys a microservices architecture on GKE with Istio service mesh. They want to enforce mutual TLS (mTLS) between services. After enabling Istio with the default configuration, some services report connection errors. What is the most likely cause?

Hard
82

A company is deploying a multi-region application on Cloud Run to serve global users. They want low latency and automatic failover. Which approach is best?

Hard
83

A developer deploys the above app.yaml to App Engine standard environment. The deployment succeeds, but the application fails to connect to the database. What is the most likely reason?

Easy
84

A company has a multi-region deployment on GKE and needs to route traffic to the closest regional cluster based on user location. They want to minimize latency. Which approach should they use?

Medium
85

A developer runs the command above and receives the error. The developer has just been granted the 'roles/cloudbuild.builds.editor' role on the project. What is the most likely reason for the permission error?

Medium
86

A team is deploying a critical microservice on GKE. They want to minimize risk by gradually shifting traffic from old to new version. They use a Deployment with a single Service. What deployment strategy should they implement?

Hard
87

A developer deploys a containerized application on Cloud Run. The application needs to access a Cloud SQL instance securely without exposing it to the internet. What is the best practice?

Easy
88

A developer wants to automatically deploy a new version of an application to App Engine Standard every time code is pushed to the main branch of a Cloud Source Repositories repository. Which service should be used?

Easy

Frequently asked questions

What does the Deploying applications domain cover on the PCD exam?
Deploying applications questions test whether you can apply the concept in context, not just recognise a definition.
How many questions are in this domain?
This page lists all 88 Deploying applications questions in the PCD question bank. The actual exam draws from this domain proportionally to its weighting in the official exam blueprint.
What is the best way to practise this domain?
Start with a short focused session (10 questions) to identify gaps, then work through explanations. Repeat with a longer session once the weak areas feel solid.
Can I practise only Deploying applications questions?
Yes — the session launcher on this page filters questions to this domain only. Choose any session length for inline explanations and scoring.
Google Professional Cloud Developer PCD Deploying applications Practice Questions