Question 1,181 of 1,446
PCDE Practice Question: Deploy scalable and highly available databases in Google Cloud
A company runs an e-commerce platform on Cloud Spanner multi-region (nam6). They experience a regional failure affecting the leader region. After failover, they observe increased write latency. What is the most 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 new leader region is geographically farther from the application instances.
In a multi-region Spanner configuration, the leader region handles write coordination. After failover, a new leader is elected in a different region, which may be farther from the majority of clients, increasing write latency if clients are not geographically distributed.
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 new leader region is geographically farther from the application instances.
Why this is correct
Correct: write latency increases when the leader region is farther from the clients, as all writes must be committed in the leader region.
- ✗
The new leader region has fewer replicas.
Why it's wrong here
Multi-region instances have symmetric replicas per region; the number of replicas does not change.
- ✗
The instance is now running in read-only mode.
Why it's wrong here
Spanner continues to accept writes after failover; it does not switch to read-only.
- ✗
The failover caused data loss, requiring recovery.
Why it's wrong here
Spanner multi-region provides zero data loss (RPO=0) during failover.
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Last reviewed: Jul 4, 2026
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