PDE Ingesting and Processing the Data Practice Question
A company wants to build an event-driven application that processes images uploaded to a Cloud Storage bucket. The processing takes up to 10 minutes per image and should be automatically triggered. Which compute option should they use?
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
✓
Cloud Run on Eventarc trigger
Cloud Functions have a 9-minute timeout; Cloud Run can handle up to 60 minutes and is triggered by Eventarc for GCS events.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Cloud Functions (2nd gen) with Eventarc trigger
Why it's wrong here
Cloud Functions (2nd gen) with Eventarc trigger is tempting because it offers serverless, event-driven execution, automatically responding to Cloud Storage uploads, and 2nd gen functions support a maximum timeout of 60 minutes, which accommodates the 10-minute processing requirement. However, for potentially resource-intensive image processing tasks that consistently run for up to 10 minutes, Cloud Run is generally a more cost-effective and flexible solution. Cloud Run provides more control over the container environment and is optimised for sustained, longer-duration workloads, even when triggered by events.
- ✗
App Engine
Why it's wrong here
App Engine is not event-driven for GCS uploads; requires manual setup.
- ✗
Cloud Functions (1st gen)
Why it's wrong here
Timeout limit is 9 minutes; insufficient for 10-minute processing.
- ✓
Cloud Run on Eventarc trigger
Why this is correct
Cloud Run can handle long-running requests (up to 60 minutes) and is triggered by Eventarc for GCS events.
Quick reference
Cloud Service Model Comparison
| Model | You Manage | Provider Manages | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| IaaS | OS, runtime, apps, data | Hardware, hypervisor, networking | EC2, Azure VMs, GCP Compute Engine |
| PaaS | Apps and data | OS, runtime, middleware, hardware | Elastic Beanstalk, Azure App Service |
| SaaS | Data and settings only | Everything else | Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Workday |
| FaaS / Serverless | Function code only | Infra, scaling, runtime | Lambda, Azure Functions, Cloud Run |
| CaaS | Containers and apps | Kubernetes, OS, hardware | EKS, AKS, GKE |
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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.