PCDE Practice Question: Manage a solution that can span multiple database technologies
Your Memorystore for Redis instance needs to survive a zonal failure with minimal data loss. Which feature should you use?
⚠ Common exam trap
Google Cloud often tests the misconception that persistence (RDB/AOF) alone provides high availability, but persistence only protects against data loss from restarts, not against zonal failures; you need cross-zone replication (Standard tier) for automatic failover and minimal data loss during a zone outage.
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
✓
Use a Standard tier instance with replication across zones within the same region.
A Standard tier Memorystore for Redis instance with replication across zones provides automatic failover to a replica in a different zone, ensuring high availability and minimal data loss during a zonal failure. The Standard tier uses synchronous replication within the region, so data written to the primary is replicated to the cross-zone replica before acknowledging the write, which minimizes data loss to only in-flight transactions that were not yet committed.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Use a Basic tier instance and schedule periodic exports to Cloud Storage.
Why it's wrong here
Basic tier is single-zone only; exports can be used for backup but not automatic failover.
- ✓
Use a Standard tier instance with replication across zones within the same region.
Why this is correct
Standard tier provides multi-AZ replication for high availability.
- ✗
Enable persistence with RDB snapshots stored in Cloud Storage.
Why it's wrong here
Although Memorystore supports persistence via RDB snapshots, this feature only protects against data loss on restarts or failures by storing periodic snapshots in Cloud Storage. It does not provide automatic failover or high availability across zones, so during a zonal failure, the instance becomes unavailable and data loss can occur if the snapshot is not up-to-date.
- ✗
Create a cross-region replica (read replica in another region).
Why it's wrong here
Memorystore does not support cross-region replicas; it supports cross-zone replicas for Standard tier.
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