Courseiva

PCDE Practice Question: Deploy scalable and highly available databases in Google Cloud

A financial services company runs a global trading application on Cloud Spanner. They need the highest availability with 99.999% SLA and automatic failover with zero data loss. Which Spanner configuration should they choose?

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

Multi-region configuration nam-eur-asia1 (US, Europe, Asia)

Multi-region configurations provide 99.999% SLA. Among the options, nam-eur-asia1 spans three continents with read-write replicas in each continent, offering automatic failover with zero data loss (RPO=0). Regional configuration offers 99.99% SLA. Multi-region with only read-only replicas in some regions does not achieve the same failover capability.

Answer analysis

Option-by-option breakdown

For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.

  • Multi-region configuration nam-eur-asia1 (US, Europe, Asia)

    Why this is correct

    This three-continent configuration provides 99.999% SLA, automatic failover with RPO=0, and is designed for global availability.

  • Regional configuration in us-central1 with read replicas

    Why it's wrong here

    Regional configuration provides 99.99% SLA, not 99.999%. It also does not protect against region failure.

  • Multi-region configuration nam6 (US, limited to North America)

    Why it's wrong here

    nam6 provides 99.999% SLA within North America but not globally. It protects against zone failures but not region failures in other continents.

  • Regional configuration with a cross-region standby using backup/restore

    Why it's wrong here

    Using backups for DR would have RPO up to backup frequency and RTO of minutes to hours, not zero data loss or automatic failover.

About these practice questions

One of 1,446 original PCDE practice questions on Courseiva, each with a full explanation and wrong-answer analysis — not exam dumps or protected exam content. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →

How Courseiva writes practice questions · Editorial policy

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.