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

A media company uses Cloud Bigtable to serve user recommendations with low latency. They want to implement disaster recovery with a secondary cluster in a different region. They need automatic failover without manual DNS changes. Which routing policy should they configure?

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

Configure read-failover routing policy and use Cloud DNS health checks

The read-failover policy uses health checks to automatically route traffic to the secondary cluster if the primary becomes unhealthy. Any-replica sends requests to the closest cluster regardless of health. Manual DNS changes would be required for any-replica after a failure. Application-managed routing is not a built-in Bigtable feature.

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 any-replica routing policy on the Bigtable cluster

    Why it's wrong here

    Any-replica routes to the closest healthy cluster but does not automatically failover; it still requires DNS routing changes if the primary fails.

  • Use single-cluster routing with manual DNS failover

    Why it's wrong here

    Manual DNS changes are not automatic; the requirement is automatic failover.

  • Implement application-managed routing with a custom health check

    Why it's wrong here

    Application-managed routing is not a built-in Bigtable feature; it would require custom code and complexity.

  • Configure read-failover routing policy and use Cloud DNS health checks

    Why this is correct

    read-failover with health checks enables automatic failover to the secondary cluster without manual DNS updates, meeting the requirement.

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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.