PDE Ingesting and Processing the Data Practice Question
A team wants to transfer data from an on-premises Hadoop cluster to Cloud Storage for processing. The cluster is located in a remote area with limited bandwidth. They need to transfer 500 TB of data. Which service 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
✓
Transfer Appliance
Transfer Appliance is designed for petabyte-scale offline transfers when bandwidth is limited.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Transfer Appliance
Why this is correct
Transfer Appliance ships a physical storage device to the remote site, letting the team copy 500 TB locally and return it to Google for upload. This bypasses the limited bandwidth that makes network-based transfer of that volume impractical.
- ✗
BigQuery Data Transfer Service
Why it's wrong here
BigQuery Data Transfer Service schedules recurring loads into BigQuery from sources such as SaaS applications; it does not move Hadoop data into Cloud Storage. It would be correct for automating periodic analytics imports, not bulk migration.
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Storage Transfer Service
Why it's wrong here
Storage Transfer Service moves data over the internet, which is impractical for 500 TB across a limited-bandwidth link. It is tempting because it is the correct choice for online transfers between cloud storage buckets or from HTTP sources, not for offline shipment.
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Dataproc with gsutil
Why it's wrong here
Dataproc with gsutil streams through the cluster's network, which is the bottleneck here; gsutil cannot bypass limited bandwidth. It is tempting because Dataproc processes Hadoop data and gsutil copies to Cloud Storage, which works well when bandwidth is adequate. For 500 TB over a constrained link, the Transfer Appliance ships disks physically.
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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.