Deploy scalable and highly available databases in Google Cloud →mediumMultiple ChoiceObjective-mapped
PCDE Practice Question: Deploy scalable and highly available databases in Google Cloud
A company is designing a global user database that must support strong consistency and horizontal scaling with automatic failover. They have a 99.999% uptime requirement and need to serve writes from a single primary region with reads from multiple regions. Which Google Cloud database and configuration should they use?
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 Spanner multi-region configuration with a leader region and read-write and read-only replicas
Cloud Spanner multi-region with read-write replicas in one region (leader) and read-only replicas in others provides strong consistency, global reads, and automatic failover. Bigtable is eventually consistent. Cloud SQL cannot span multiple regions natively. Firestore does not provide 99.999% SLA.
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 Spanner multi-region configuration with a leader region and read-write and read-only replicas
Why this is correct
Spanner multi-region provides strong consistency, automatic failover, 99.999% SLA, and the ability to have read-write replicas in the leader region and read-only replicas elsewhere.
- ✗
Cloud Firestore in multi-region mode
Why it's wrong here
Firestore multi-region provides strong consistency but does not have a 99.999% SLA; it offers 99.99%.
- ✗
Cloud Bigtable with replication and any-replica routing
Why it's wrong here
Bigtable provides eventual consistency across regions, not strong consistency. Also manual failover is required.
- ✗
Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL with cross-region read replicas and auto-failover
Why it's wrong here
Cloud SQL cross-region replicas require manual promotion; automatic failover is only within the same region.
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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.