PCDOE Implementing service monitoring strategies Practice Question
A company wants to reduce costs associated with Cloud Monitoring. They have many custom metrics and high ingestion rates. Which cost optimization strategy is most effective?
⚠ Common exam trap
Google Cloud often tests the misconception that reducing sampling frequency or moving metrics to logs will always lower costs, when in fact the most effective first step is eliminating unused metrics and reducing label cardinality to minimize the number of time series ingested.
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
✓
Delete all unused custom metrics and reduce labels.
Deleting unused custom metrics and reducing labels directly reduces the volume of data ingested and stored, which is the primary cost driver in Cloud Monitoring (formerly Stackdriver). Custom metrics incur charges per data point ingested, and each unique label combination creates additional time series, multiplying costs. This strategy eliminates waste without sacrificing necessary monitoring fidelity.
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 log-based metrics instead of custom metrics.
Why it's wrong here
Log-based metrics incur logging costs, which may offset monitoring savings.
- ✗
Aggregate metrics into buckets and export to BigQuery for analysis.
Why it's wrong here
Exporting does not reduce ingestion cost; aggregation into buckets is not a standard Cloud Monitoring feature.
- ✗
Reduce the sampling rate of all custom metrics to 1 minute.
Why it's wrong here
Lower sampling may reduce data points but not necessarily cost if the metric volume remains high.
- ✓
Delete all unused custom metrics and reduce labels.
Why this is correct
Unused metrics and high label cardinality contribute to costs; cleaning them up is the most direct approach.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This PCDOE 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 PCDOE exam.