PCDE Practice Question: Manage a solution that can span multiple database technologies
A Cloud SQL for MySQL instance's storage utilization has reached 95%. The database is 5 TB and needs to grow. The operations team tries to increase storage via gcloud but receives an error. What is the likely cause?
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
✓
The instance is at the maximum storage limit for its machine tier
Cloud SQL allows online storage increases but with limits: the maximum storage cannot exceed 30 TB, and the increase must be done in increments. However, the error is likely because the instance is using the maximum allowed storage for its tier, or the storage cannot be shrunk. But the most common issue is that the instance has an on-demand backup or restore operation in progress, which blocks resize. Another possibility is that the storage is already at the maximum for that machine type. However, the question implies a common misconfiguration: the instance may have a read replica that is replicating from it, and storage resize is not allowed if the replica is in a different region? Actually, storage resize is allowed regardless. More likely: the user has reached the maximum storage size for the current tier (e.g., db-n1-standard-8 supports up to 10 TB). The correct answer is tier storage limit.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
The instance is at the maximum storage limit for its machine tier
Why this is correct
Each Cloud SQL tier has a max storage limit (e.g., 10 TB for db-n1-standard-8). If the instance is already at that limit, resize is blocked.
- ✗
The storage resize operation is only allowed during maintenance windows
Why it's wrong here
Storage resize is online and allowed at any time.
- ✗
The instance has binary logging enabled, which prevents storage increase
Why it's wrong here
Binary logging does not block storage resize.
- ✗
The instance has automatic storage increase disabled
Why it's wrong here
Disabling auto-storage increase does not prevent manual resize.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This PCDE 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 PCDE exam.