PDE Ingesting and Processing the Data Practice Question
A company wants to migrate 500 TB of on-premises archival data to Cloud Storage. The data is stored on a SAN and the network link is limited to 1 Gbps. The migration must complete within 10 days. What is the MOST cost-effective approach?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is that candidates underestimate the time required for network transfer at 1 Gbps and overestimate the practicality of compression or incremental sync, failing to recognize that physical shipping is the only viable option for multi-petabyte data within a tight deadline.
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
✓
Order a Transfer Appliance, copy data locally, and ship it to Google for ingestion.
The Transfer Appliance is designed for large-scale data migrations where network bandwidth is insufficient. With 500 TB at 1 Gbps, the theoretical transfer time is over 46 days, far exceeding the 10-day window. The appliance allows you to physically ship the data, bypassing network constraints entirely, making it the most cost-effective and timely solution.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Set up a Cloud VPN and use rsync over the encrypted connection.
Why it's wrong here
VPN adds overhead and does not improve throughput; still limited by 1 Gbps bandwidth.
- ✗
Use BigQuery Data Transfer Service to load the data directly into BigQuery.
Why it's wrong here
Data Transfer Service is for online transfers from specific sources, not bulk file uploads.
- ✓
Order a Transfer Appliance, copy data locally, and ship it to Google for ingestion.
Why this is correct
Transfer Appliance is designed for large offline transfers when network speed is a constraint.
- ✗
Use Storage Transfer Service to copy data from on-premises to GCS over the existing network.
Why it's wrong here
Network speed is insufficient to meet the deadline.
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JA
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.