PDE Maintaining and Automating Data Workloads Practice Question
Your organization has a BigQuery flat-rate reservation with 2000 slots. During peak hours, query performance degrades because concurrent queries exceed the available slots. You want to handle these bursts without changing the base reservation. What should you do?
⚠ Common exam trap
Google PDE often tests the distinction between permanent capacity changes (committed use discounts) and temporary capacity additions (flex slots), trapping candidates who confuse autoscaling (which modifies the reservation's behavior) with the requirement to keep the base reservation unchanged.
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
✓
Purchase flex slots during peak hours to add capacity temporarily.
Flex slots allow you to temporarily add capacity to a BigQuery flat-rate reservation without committing to a permanent increase. This handles burst workloads during peak hours by adding slots on demand, and you only pay for the time they are used. The base reservation of 2000 slots remains unchanged, meeting the requirement.
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 autoscaling on the reservation to automatically add slots up to a maximum.
Why it's wrong here
Autoscaling is a feature for on-demand pricing, not flat-rate. Flat-rate reservations have a fixed number of slots.
- ✗
Purchase committed use discounts to increase the base reservation to 3000 slots.
Why it's wrong here
Committed use discounts require a 1- or 3-year commitment, which is unnecessary for handling occasional bursts.
- ✗
Change the pricing model to on-demand to allow unlimited slots.
Why it's wrong here
Switching to on-demand changes the cost model and may lead to unpredictable costs. It also does not use the existing flat-rate reservation.
- ✓
Purchase flex slots during peak hours to add capacity temporarily.
Why this is correct
Flex slots are short-term, pay-as-you-go slots that can be added to a reservation for burst capacity, then released.
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