Design innovative, scalable, and highly available cloud database solutions →easyMultiple ChoiceObjective-mapped
PCDE Practice Question: Design innovative, scalable, and highly available cloud database solutions
A startup needs a database for a global user base with low-latency reads and writes, strong consistency, and the ability to scale horizontally without downtime. They anticipate variable traffic. Which Google Cloud database service meets these requirements?
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
✓
Cloud Spanner
Cloud Spanner provides global distribution, strong consistency, horizontal scaling, and no downtime for schema changes or scaling. Cloud SQL is not global, Bigtable does not have strong consistency, and Firestore is not global with strong consistency for multi-region.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Cloud Bigtable
Why it's wrong here
Bigtable does not provide strong consistency (eventual on replication).
- ✗
Cloud SQL
Why it's wrong here
Cloud SQL is regional and has limited scalability.
- ✗
Firestore
Why it's wrong here
Firestore is not globally consistent in multi-region mode.
- ✓
Cloud Spanner
Why this is correct
Spanner offers global, strongly consistent, scalable database.
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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.