Design innovative, scalable, and highly available cloud database solutions →mediumMultiple ChoiceObjective-mapped
PCDE Practice Question: Design innovative, scalable, and highly available cloud database solutions
A company runs an e-commerce website on Cloud SQL. They want to scale read traffic without impacting write performance and need high availability across zones. Which 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
✓
Use a regional Cloud SQL instance with automatic failover and add read replicas
Cloud SQL offers read replicas for scaling read traffic and regional (multi-zone) instances for high availability. Using a regional instance with automatic failover provides HA; adding read replicas offloads reads. A cross-region replica adds latency, and a single zone with increased tier does not provide HA.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Create a cross-region replica and use it for reads
Why it's wrong here
Cross-region replicas add latency; better to use in-region read replicas.
- ✗
Increase the machine tier of the existing instance
Why it's wrong here
Scaling up helps both reads and writes but does not provide HA.
- ✗
Migrate to Cloud Spanner for automatic read scaling
Why it's wrong here
Spanner is overkill and requires migration; Cloud SQL with read replicas is sufficient.
- ✓
Use a regional Cloud SQL instance with automatic failover and add read replicas
Why this is correct
Regional instance provides HA; read replicas scale reads without affecting primary write performance.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every PCDE question from scratch — 1,446 in total, each with an explanation and a wrong-answer breakdown. None are copied from real exams or dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
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.