Question 1,488 of 1,446
PCDE Practice Question: Deploy scalable and highly available databases in Google Cloud
A global financial services company requires a multi-region Spanner instance with an RPO of zero and an RTO of less than 5 seconds for a critical transactional workload. The application writes to a single region and reads from multiple regions. 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
✓
A two-region multi-region configuration (e.g., nam6)
For zero RPO and sub-5-second RTO, a multi-region configuration with synchronous replication is needed. Spanner multi-region configurations like nam6 use synchronous replication across a primary and secondary region (with both read-write replicas). The leader region handles writes, and read-only replicas are for reads. A two-region multi-region config (e.g., nam6) provides synchronous replication (RPO=0) and automatic failover in <5 seconds. Three-region configs (nam-eur-asia1) have higher write latency due to longer distances.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
A single-region configuration with read replicas in multiple zones
Why it's wrong here
Single-region Spanner does not support failover to another region, so RTO would be higher in a regional outage.
- ✓
A two-region multi-region configuration (e.g., nam6)
Why this is correct
Two-region multi-region configs use synchronous replication across two regions, providing RPO=0 and RTO<5s. Nam6 (us-central1 and us-east1) fits this scenario.
- ✗
A dual-region configuration with two read-write regions and one read-only region
Why it's wrong here
Spanner multi-region configurations do not have 'dual-region' with two read-write regions; there is only one leader region per instance. This is not a valid config.
- ✗
A three-region multi-region configuration (e.g., nam-eur-asia1)
Why it's wrong here
Three-region configs have higher write latency due to intercontinental distance, which may impact write latency, but still RPO=0. However, it's overkill for writes from one primary region.
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Last reviewed: Jul 4, 2026
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