PDE Storing the Data Practice Question
A company has a Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL instance that must be highly available across zones with automatic failover. They also need a read replica for reporting workloads. Which configuration should they use?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse high availability (automatic zonal failover) with disaster recovery (manual cross-region promotion), and assuming that a read replica can serve as a failover target without understanding that Cloud SQL read replicas use asynchronous replication and are not suitable for automatic failover.
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
✓
Enable high availability (regional) and create a read replica
Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL supports regional high availability (HA) with synchronous replication across two zones, ensuring automatic failover without data loss. Additionally, you can create a read replica in a different zone or region to offload reporting workloads without impacting the primary instance's performance. This combination meets both the high availability and read replica requirements.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Enable high availability (regional) and create a read replica
Why this is correct
A regional configuration replicates the primary across zones and provides automatic failover, while a separate read replica offloads reporting queries without competing with transactional traffic. Both stated requirements — cross-zone high availability and reporting capacity — are satisfied simultaneously.
- ✗
Deploy Cloud SQL in multi-region mode
Why it's wrong here
Cloud SQL offers no multi-region deployment mode; regional configuration places the primary and standby in different zones of one region. It is tempting because the phrase suggests maximum resilience across geographies; multi-region designs would be the right approach for globally distributed, latency-sensitive read workloads on other database services.
- ✗
Enable automatic backups and point-in-time recovery
Why it's wrong here
Backups and point-in-time recovery restore data after corruption or deletion; they provide neither a standby across zones with automatic failover nor a readable replica. They are tempting because both features are commonly enabled on production databases; they would be the correct answer for a requirement covering accidental data loss and recovery windows.
- ✗
Create a cross-region replica and use it for failover
Why it's wrong here
A cross-region replica serves reads and can be promoted manually, but it does not deliver same-region zone redundancy with automatic failover. It is tempting because it is a replica, matching the reporting requirement; it would be the correct choice for disaster recovery when the primary region becomes unavailable.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This PDE 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 PDE exam.