PCSE Practice Question: Managing Operations in a Cloud Solution Environment
A company needs to archive their VPC Flow Logs for 10 years for compliance. They also need to run occasional queries on the logs. What is the most cost-effective approach?
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
✓
Create a log sink to export VPC Flow Logs to Cloud Storage with a retention policy of 10 years and use BigQuery external tables for occasional queries.
Exporting logs to Cloud Storage with a retention policy is the most cost-effective for long-term archival. BigQuery is more expensive for storage but allows queries. Using a log sink with _Default log view includes VPC Flow Logs (if enabled).
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Export VPC Flow Logs to both Cloud Storage and BigQuery simultaneously.
Why it's wrong here
Unnecessary duplication increases cost.
- ✓
Create a log sink to export VPC Flow Logs to Cloud Storage with a retention policy of 10 years and use BigQuery external tables for occasional queries.
Why this is correct
Cloud Storage provides low-cost archival, and BigQuery external tables allow querying without loading.
- ✗
Create a log sink to export VPC Flow Logs to BigQuery and set a table partition expiration to 10 years.
Why it's wrong here
BigQuery storage costs are higher than Cloud Storage for long-term archival.
- ✗
Enable VPC Flow Logs and set the log bucket retention to 10 years.
Why it's wrong here
Log bucket retention is limited to 3650 days (10 years) but is more expensive than Cloud Storage for archival.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This PCSE 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 PCSE exam.