- A
Use health checks and load balancing.
Health checks ensure only healthy instances receive traffic; load balancing provides fault tolerance.
- B
Use Cloud SQL read replicas for database load.
Why wrong: Read replicas improve read throughput but are not a general high-availability practice for all applications.
- C
Enable OS Login for SSH access.
Why wrong: OS Login improves security but does not directly impact application availability or quality.
- D
Use regional persistent disks for stateful data.
Regional PDs replicate data across zones, protecting against zone failure.
- E
Use managed instance groups (MIGs) with autoscaling.
MIGs automatically create and heal instances, ensuring capacity and availability.
Question 681 of 1,000
Compute Engine High Availability Best Practices
This PDE practice question tests your understanding of ensuring solution quality. Read the scenario carefully and evaluate each option against the stated constraints before committing to an answer. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
A team runs a production application on Compute Engine. They want to ensure high availability and quality. Which three best practices should they implement? (Choose three.)
Clue words in this question
Noticing these words before you look at the options changes how you read each choice.
Clue:
"best"Why it matters: Signals that multiple options may be partially correct. Choose the option that most directly solves the exact problem described, not the one that sounds most complete.
Quick Answer
The answer is to use managed instance groups with autoscaling, regional persistent disks, and health checks with load balancing. These three practices form the foundation of Compute Engine high availability best practices because they address the three critical failure modes: instance failure, zone failure, and traffic misrouting. Managed instance groups provide autoscaling and autohealing to replace unhealthy VMs automatically, regional persistent disks replicate data synchronously across two zones for durable storage, and health checks with load balancing ensure traffic is only sent to healthy instances. On the Google Professional Data Engineer exam, this question tests your understanding of operational resilience patterns rather than just theoretical concepts; a common trap is selecting snapshot-based backups instead of regional persistent disks, which offer lower RTO. Remember the mnemonic "MIG, RPD, LB" — if you see any answer missing one of these three pillars, it is likely a distractor.
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
✓
Use health checks and load balancing.
Health checks and load balancing distribute traffic across healthy instances, automatically routing requests away from failed instances to maintain availability. This is a core pattern for fault-tolerant Compute Engine deployments, as health checks (e.g., HTTP, TCP, or SSL) probe instance responsiveness and load balancers (e.g., External HTTP(S) Load Balancer) use the health status to direct traffic only to healthy backends.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
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 health checks and load balancing.
Why this is correct
Health checks ensure only healthy instances receive traffic; load balancing provides fault tolerance.
Clue confirmation
The clue word "best" in the question point toward this answer.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
- ✗
Use Cloud SQL read replicas for database load.
Why it's wrong here
Read replicas improve read throughput but are not a general high-availability practice for all applications.
- ✗
Enable OS Login for SSH access.
Why it's wrong here
OS Login improves security but does not directly impact application availability or quality.
- ✓
Use regional persistent disks for stateful data.
Why this is correct
Regional PDs replicate data across zones, protecting against zone failure.
Clue confirmation
The clue word "best" in the question point toward this answer.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
- ✓
Use managed instance groups (MIGs) with autoscaling.
Why this is correct
MIGs automatically create and heal instances, ensuring capacity and availability.
Clue confirmation
The clue word "best" in the question point toward this answer.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The Google Professional Data Engineer exam often tests the distinction between security features (like OS Login) and availability/quality features, tempting candidates to select a security option when the question explicitly asks for high availability and quality best practices.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Health checks for Compute Engine backends can be configured with configurable check intervals (e.g., every 5 seconds), timeout (e.g., 5 seconds), and unhealthy threshold (e.g., 2 consecutive failures) to quickly detect and isolate failed instances. Managed instance groups (MIGs) with autoscaling automatically create or delete instances based on CPU utilization, load balancing capacity, or custom metrics, and when combined with regional persistent disks (which replicate data synchronously across two zones), they enable stateful workloads to survive a zonal failure without data loss.
KKey Concepts to Remember
- Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
- Find the constraint that changes the correct option.
- Eliminate answers that are true in general but not in this case.
TExam Day Tips
- Watch for words such as best, first, most likely and least administrative effort.
- Review why wrong options are wrong, not only why the correct option is correct.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
How this comes up in practice
A company's IT admin needs to give a contractor read-only access to production logs without sharing account credentials. Using role-based access control (RBAC) and temporary scoped permissions — not a permanent shared password — is the correct pattern. Questions like this test whether you can apply least-privilege access across cloud identity services.
What to study next
Got this wrong? Here's your next step.
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
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FAQ
Questions learners often ask
What does this PDE question test?
Ensuring solution quality — This question tests Ensuring solution quality — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Use health checks and load balancing. — Health checks and load balancing distribute traffic across healthy instances, automatically routing requests away from failed instances to maintain availability. This is a core pattern for fault-tolerant Compute Engine deployments, as health checks (e.g., HTTP, TCP, or SSL) probe instance responsiveness and load balancers (e.g., External HTTP(S) Load Balancer) use the health status to direct traffic only to healthy backends.
What should I do if I get this PDE question wrong?
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
Are there clue words in this question I should notice?
Yes — watch for: "best". Signals that multiple options may be partially correct. Choose the option that most directly solves the exact problem described, not the one that sounds most complete.
What is the key concept behind this question?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Last reviewed: Jul 4, 2026
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