hardMultiple SelectObjective-mapped
PCDE Practice Question: A team uses Cloud Deploy to manage deployments to…
A team uses Cloud Deploy to manage deployments to GKE across dev, staging, and prod. They want to implement a canary deployment strategy that automatically progresses based on latency metrics and includes a manual approval step before the full rollout. Which three Cloud Deploy features should they use together?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates confuse 'automated rollback' (a reactive failure-handling feature) with 'automated progression' (a proactive verification step), and they may incorrectly select blue/green because they think it supports canary-like traffic shifting, whereas Cloud Deploy's blue/green does not support phased traffic increases.
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
✓
Canary deployment strategy
Cloud Deploy's canary deployment strategy allows you to progressively shift traffic to a new version, which aligns with the requirement for a gradual rollout. Option C is correct because SLO-based verification uses latency metrics (e.g., from Cloud Monitoring) to automatically determine whether the canary should progress, meeting the need for automated progression based on latency. Option E is correct because a manual approval gate can be inserted before the final full rollout, satisfying the requirement for a manual approval step.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Blue/green strategy
Why it's wrong here
Not requested; canary is specified.
- ✓
Canary deployment strategy
Why this is correct
Required for the progressive rollout pattern.
- ✓
SLO-based verification
Why this is correct
Automates promotion based on latency metrics.
- ✗
Automated rollback
Why it's wrong here
While possible, it is not one of the three features described (canary, verification, approval).
- ✓
Manual approval gate
Why this is correct
Adds manual approval before proceeding to prod.
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Same concept, more angles
8 more ways this is tested on PCDE
These questions test the same concept from different angles. Work through them to make sure you can recognise it however the exam phrases it.
Variation 1. A team uses Cloud Deploy with a delivery pipeline that deploys to GKE clusters across dev, staging, and prod targets. They want to automatically roll back a release if the canary deployment in staging fails to meet a defined service-level objective (SLO) for error rate. Which Cloud Deploy feature enables this?
hard- A.Use preDeploy and postDeploy hooks to run Cloud Run jobs that check error rate and roll back.
- ✓ B.Configure canary deployment with the '--canary-percentage' flag and enable SLO verification in the delivery pipeline.
- C.Use Binary Authorization with a custom attestor that checks error rate.
- D.Set an approval gate on the staging target that requires manual review.
Why B: Cloud Deploy's canary deployment strategy supports SLO verification via the `--canary-percentage` flag combined with a `canaryDeployment` configuration that includes a `verify` phase. This allows the pipeline to automatically roll back the release if the canary fails to meet the defined error rate SLO, without manual intervention or external services.
Variation 2. A company uses Cloud Deploy for a CD pipeline to Cloud Run. They want to implement a canary deployment that automatically rolls back if the error rate increases by more than 5% during the canary phase. Which TWO actions should they take?
medium- A.Use a blue/green strategy instead, as it supports automatic rollback
- ✓ B.Configure a canary deployment strategy in the delivery pipeline with phases and metrics
- C.Delegate rollback to the developer who must manually approve or reject
- ✓ D.Create a Cloud Monitoring alert policy that triggers a Cloud Deploy rollback via a webhook
- E.Set up a preDeploy hook to run a load test
Why B: Cloud Deploy's canary strategy allows you to define phases with specific metrics (e.g., error rate) that are evaluated during the rollout. If the error rate exceeds the defined threshold (e.g., 5% increase), Cloud Deploy automatically rolls back the canary without manual intervention. This is configured in the delivery pipeline YAML under the `strategy` section with `canary` and `phases`.
Variation 3. A DevOps team wants to use Cloud Deploy to promote releases across multiple targets. They need to define a delivery pipeline that includes a canary deployment for a GKE cluster and a standard deployment for Cloud Run. Which two strategies can they use in the same pipeline?
medium- A.Progressive delivery strategy with manual approval
- B.Blue/green strategy for Cloud Run
- C.Rolling update strategy for GKE
- ✓ D.Canary strategy for GKE
- ✓ E.Standard strategy for Cloud Run
Why D: Cloud Deploy allows different deployment strategies per target. You can mix 'canary' for GKE and 'standard' for Cloud Run in the same delivery pipeline. 'Blue/green' is also supported but not required.
Variation 4. A team is designing a CI/CD pipeline for a microservice that requires canary deployments with metrics-based rollback. They want to use Cloud Deploy and Cloud Run. Which three features must they configure? (Choose 3)
hard- ✓ A.Canary deployment strategy with canary percentage and metric thresholds
- ✓ B.Delivery pipeline with dev, staging, and prod targets
- ✓ C.Cloud Run as the deployment target
- D.Binary Authorization policy
- E.Manual approval gate on the prod target
Why A: Cloud Deploy's canary strategy requires a delivery pipeline with stages, targets using Cloud Run, and a canary deployment strategy with percentage and metrics. Approval gates are optional.
Variation 5. An organization has a Cloud Deploy delivery pipeline with a canary deployment strategy to GKE. They want to automatically pause the rollout if the canary revision's error rate exceeds 5% for 5 minutes. Which feature should they use?
hard- ✓ A.Canary deployment strategy with metric analysis
- B.PreDeploy hook
- C.Rollback on deploy failure
- D.Manual approval gate
Why A: Cloud Deploy can integrate with Cloud Monitoring metrics to automate canary verification. By defining a canary deployment strategy with metric-based analysis, the rollout can be paused or rolled back if predefined thresholds are breached.
Variation 6. A company uses Cloud Deploy with a delivery pipeline that has dev, staging, and prod targets. They want to require manual approval before promoting a release to prod. How should they configure this?
medium- ✓ A.Add an approval gate in the prod target configuration
- B.Configure a postDeploy hook that requires approval
- C.Use Cloud Build triggers with manual invocation for prod deployments
- D.Set the prod target's deployment strategy to 'BlueGreen'
Variation 7. A company uses Cloud Deploy to deploy to multiple GKE clusters (dev, staging, prod). They want to implement a canary deployment strategy for the prod target. The canary should deploy 10% of pods initially, then after 30 minutes and a manual approval, promote to 100%. Which configurations are necessary? (Choose THREE).
hard- ✓ A.Set the canary percentage to 10% and the promotion interval to 30m.
- ✓ B.Add an approval gate on the prod target.
- ✓ C.Define a canary strategy in the prod target within the delivery pipeline.
- D.Set the strategy to 'blue/green' with a 10% initial pool.
- E.Create a separate delivery pipeline for canary deployments.
Why A: Setting the canary percentage to 10% and the promotion interval to 30m directly implements the required behavior: initially 10% of pods receive traffic, and after 30 minutes the deployment automatically attempts promotion. This matches the canary deployment strategy in Cloud Deploy where the `canaryDeployment` configuration specifies `percentages` and `verify` intervals.
Variation 8. A team uses Cloud Deploy to manage deployments to GKE. They want to automatically roll back to the previous revision if a canary deployment fails health checks. What should they configure?
medium- A.Configure a manual approval gate before promotion
- B.Set the deployment strategy to blue/green
- ✓ C.Set 'rollback-on-failure: true' in the delivery pipeline definition
- D.Use a Cloud Build step to run kubectl rollout undo
Why C: Cloud Deploy supports automatic rollback on failure for canary deployments by setting `rollback-on-failure: true` in the delivery pipeline definition. When a canary deployment fails health checks, Cloud Deploy automatically reverts to the previous stable revision without manual intervention, ensuring minimal downtime and consistent release governance.
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.