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PCDE Practice Question: Deploy scalable and highly available databases in Google Cloud
A company is designing a disaster recovery plan for their Cloud Bigtable instance. They need to ensure that in the event of a regional outage, they can failover to a secondary region with minimal data loss and automatic re-routing of traffic. Which TWO actions should they take? (Choose two.)
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
✓
Set up Cloud DNS with a health check that updates the routing policy to the secondary cluster on failure.
To achieve DR with Bigtable, you need to configure replication to a secondary cluster in a different region. Additionally, you need to configure the application's routing to failover to the secondary cluster. Using Cloud DNS with a health check that updates the routing policy can automate traffic re-routing. Increasing the number of nodes does not provide DR. Exporting to Cloud Storage is for backup, not failover. Using Spanner is a different service.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Export Bigtable data to Cloud Storage daily and script the import into a new cluster.
Why it's wrong here
Daily exports have high RPO and require manual intervention, not meeting minimal data loss and automatic re-routing.
- ✓
Set up Cloud DNS with a health check that updates the routing policy to the secondary cluster on failure.
Why this is correct
Cloud DNS health check can detect primary failure and automatically update the routing policy to direct traffic to the secondary cluster, achieving automated failover.
- ✗
Increase the number of nodes in the primary cluster to handle failover load.
Why it's wrong here
Increasing nodes does not provide disaster recovery across regions.
- ✓
Configure Bigtable replication with a secondary cluster in a different region.
Why this is correct
Replication asynchronously copies data to the secondary cluster, enabling failover with limited data loss (RPO = replication lag).
- ✗
Use Cloud Spanner instead of Bigtable for built-in multi-region failover.
Why it's wrong here
While Spanner provides DR, the question is about Bigtable. Switching services is not an action to take for Bigtable DR.
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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.