hardMultiple ChoiceObjective-mapped
PMLE Practice Question: Your team has deployed a text classification…
Your team has deployed a text classification model on Vertex AI Endpoints. You notice that the model's latency has increased significantly over the last week, but the request rate has remained stable. Which of the following is the most likely cause?
⚠ Common exam trap
Test-takers frequently confuse 'model latency' with 'request rate' and assume any latency increase must be due to scaling issues, ignoring that preprocessing logic changes can dramatically affect per-request performance without altering throughput.
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
✓
A change in the preprocessing logic that now includes a computationally expensive step
A computationally expensive preprocessing step directly increases per-request latency on the inference path, even when request rate is stable. Vertex AI Endpoints execute user-provided preprocessing code before model inference, so adding a heavy operation (e.g., large regex, image resizing, or external API call) will linearly increase response time for every prediction.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
A sudden increase in the number of prediction requests
Why it's wrong here
Request rate is stable, so not the cause.
- ✗
The model was replaced with a larger version without updating the endpoint
Why it's wrong here
Model replacement requires redeployment; latency change would be immediate, not gradual.
- ✓
A change in the preprocessing logic that now includes a computationally expensive step
Why this is correct
This increases per-request latency without changing request rate.
- ✗
A misconfiguration in the autoscaling policy
Why it's wrong here
Autoscaling issues typically cause errors under load, not gradual latency increase with stable traffic.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This PMLE 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 PMLE exam.