ACE Practice Question: A team is selecting the right Compute Engine…
This ACE practice question tests your understanding of a team is selecting the right compute engine…. Compare every option against the stated constraints before choosing — the best answer satisfies all requirements, not just the most obvious one. 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 is selecting the right Compute Engine machine family for a machine learning training workload that is GPU-bound. The workload runs for 6 hours at a time and tolerates interruption. Which combination maximizes GPU access at lowest cost?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Good practice is not just finding the correct option. The wrong answers often show the exact trap the exam wants you to fall into.
Distractor review
N2-standard machine with a custom GPU attached as a standard on-demand VM
N2-standard machines don't support GPU attachments natively — GPU workloads use accelerator-optimized machine families (A2, A3, G2).
Best answer
A2 or A3 (accelerator-optimized) Spot VM with NVIDIA GPU
A2/A3 machines include NVIDIA A100/H100 GPUs designed for ML training. Using Spot VM pricing for fault-tolerant 6-hour jobs reduces cost by up to 91%.
Distractor review
E2-highcpu Spot VM — more vCPUs provide equivalent GPU-like parallelism
CPU parallelism is not equivalent to GPU compute for ML training workloads — actual GPU hardware is required for tensor operations.
Distractor review
C3 (compute-optimized) on-demand VM — best for numerically intensive workloads
C3 machines are optimized for high single-threaded CPU performance — they don't include GPUs and are not suited for GPU-bound ML training.
Common exam trap
Common exam trap: NAT rules depend on direction and matching traffic
NAT is not only about the public address. The inside/outside interface roles and the ACL or rule that matches traffic are just as important.
Technical deep dive
How to think about this question
NAT questions usually test address translation, overload/PAT behaviour, static mappings and whether the right traffic is being translated. Read the interface direction and address terms carefully.
KKey Concepts to Remember
- Static NAT maps one inside address to one outside address.
- PAT allows many inside hosts to share one public address using ports.
- Inside local and inside global describe the private and translated addresses.
- NAT ACLs identify traffic for translation, not always security filtering.
TExam Day Tips
- Identify inside and outside interfaces first.
- Check whether the scenario needs static NAT, dynamic NAT or PAT.
- Do not confuse NAT matching ACLs with normal packet-filtering intent.
Key takeaway
NAT direction and interface roles matter as much as the IP address mapping. Inside/outside designation controls which traffic is translated.
Related practice questions
Related ACE practice-question pages
Use these pages to review the topic behind this question. This is how one missed question becomes focused revision.
More questions from this exam
Keep practising from the same exam bank, or move into a focused topic page if this question exposed a weak area.
Question 1
What is the correct order of the Google Cloud resource hierarchy from highest to lowest level?
Question 2
A compliance archive stores legal documents accessed at most once per quarter. Which Cloud Storage class minimizes storage cost while meeting that access pattern?
Question 3
Which gcloud command creates a Compute Engine VM named 'web-01' using the e2-medium machine type in zone us-central1-a?
Question 4
A team wants to receive an email alert when the average CPU utilization of VMs in a managed instance group exceeds 80% for more than 5 minutes. What should they create in Cloud Monitoring?
Question 5
A junior developer needs read-only access to all GCP resources in a project. Which IAM role grants the minimum permissions required?
Question 6
A startup creates its first Google Cloud project. Before deploying any paid resources, what must be linked to the project?
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FAQ
Questions learners often ask
What does this ACE question test?
Static NAT maps one inside address to one outside address.
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: A2 or A3 (accelerator-optimized) Spot VM with NVIDIA GPU — Accelerator-Optimized (A2 or A3) machine families attach NVIDIA GPUs (A100, H100) for ML training. Combined with Spot VM pricing (up to 91% discount for fault-tolerant workloads), this provides the highest GPU compute at the lowest cost for interruptible training jobs.
What should I do if I get this ACE question wrong?
Review the four NAT address types (inside local, inside global, outside local, outside global), PAT port overload, and static vs dynamic NAT use cases. Then practise related ACE NAT questions on configuration and troubleshooting.
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This ACE 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 ACE exam.