PCDE Practice Question: Manage a solution that can span multiple database technologies
A company is using Cloud SQL and wants to automatically increase storage when disk usage reaches a threshold. What should they configure?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is that candidates may over-engineer a solution (e.g., Cloud Functions or Monitoring alerts) when a simple, built-in configuration option exists, or they may confuse Active Assist recommendations with automated actions.
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
✓
Enable 'auto-storage increase' in the instance settings.
Cloud SQL provides a built-in 'auto-storage increase' setting that, when enabled, automatically increases the instance's storage capacity when disk usage reaches a predefined threshold (typically 90% or when free space drops below a certain amount). This eliminates the need for manual intervention or custom automation, ensuring high availability and preventing out-of-disk errors.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Enable 'auto-storage increase' in the instance settings.
Why this is correct
Correct. This setting automatically increases storage.
- ✗
Use Active Assist recommendations to manually resize.
Why it's wrong here
Active Assist provides recommendations, but does not automatically increase storage.
- ✗
Set up a Cloud Monitoring alert to manually increase storage when usage exceeds 80%.
Why it's wrong here
Manual intervention is not automatic.
- ✗
Configure a Cloud Function to resize the disk via API when threshold is reached.
Why it's wrong here
While a Cloud Function can resize a Cloud SQL instance via the API, it cannot directly monitor Cloud SQL storage metrics to trigger itself; Cloud SQL lacks native event-arc triggers for disk usage thresholds. This option is tempting because Cloud Functions excel at automating responses to external events, such as a Pub/Sub message from a monitoring alert, but the question requires a self-contained, automated scaling mechanism without custom code. The correct approach uses Cloud SQL’s built-in automatic storage increase feature, which requires no external orchestration.
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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.