Google ACE Practice Question: Ensuring successful operation of a cloud solution
This ACE practice question tests your understanding of ensuring successful operation of a cloud solution. Match the stated requirement to the specific cloud service, access model, or configuration option — many options are valid in isolation but not for this scenario. 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.
Which THREE actions are recommended to ensure the successful operation of a Compute Engine instance running a production workload?
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Enable deletion protection on the instance.
Enabling deletion protection prevents accidental deletion of the instance. Configuring snapshots with a retention policy ensures data backup and recovery. Setting up a health check and autohealing automatically recreates unhealthy instances, improving availability. Using a single zone subnet (D) reduces fault tolerance, and attaching a GPU (E) is only needed for specific workloads, not a general best practice.
Key principle: Count usable hosts — not total addresses — and remember that the network and broadcast addresses are not available to hosts in standard IPv4 subnets.
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 deletion protection on the instance.
Why this is correct
Deletion protection prevents accidental deletion of a production instance.
GPUs are workload-specific and not a general best practice for all production instances.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: usable hosts are not the same as total addresses
Subnetting questions often tempt you into counting all addresses. In normal IPv4 subnets, the network and broadcast addresses are not usable host addresses.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Subnetting questions test whether you can identify the network, broadcast address, usable range, mask and correct subnet. Slow down enough to calculate the block size correctly.
KKey Concepts to Remember
CIDR notation defines the prefix length.
Block size helps identify subnet boundaries.
Network and broadcast addresses are not usable hosts in normal IPv4 subnets.
The required host count determines the smallest suitable subnet.
TExam Day Tips
→Write the block size before choosing the subnet.
→Check whether the question asks for hosts, subnets or a specific address range.
→Do not confuse /24, /25, /26 and /27 host counts.
Key takeaway
Count usable hosts — not total addresses — and remember that the network and broadcast addresses are not available to hosts in standard IPv4 subnets.
Real-world example
How this comes up in practice
An e-commerce site experiences heavy traffic on Black Friday and near-zero traffic during off-peak weeks. Rather than provisioning permanent large VMs, the team uses auto-scaling groups that add capacity automatically under load and reduce it overnight. Questions like this test whether you understand elasticity, availability zones, and cloud compute scaling patterns.
Related glossary terms
Concepts from this question explained
These glossary pages explain the core terms tested in this ACE question in full detail.
Review block sizes, usable host formulas (2^n − 2), and how to find network and broadcast addresses for /24 through /30. Then practise related ACE subnetting questions on CIDR, address ranges, and subnet selection.
Ensuring successful operation of a cloud solution — This question tests Ensuring successful operation of a cloud solution — CIDR notation defines the prefix length..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Enable deletion protection on the instance. — Enabling deletion protection prevents accidental deletion of the instance. Configuring snapshots with a retention policy ensures data backup and recovery. Setting up a health check and autohealing automatically recreates unhealthy instances, improving availability. Using a single zone subnet (D) reduces fault tolerance, and attaching a GPU (E) is only needed for specific workloads, not a general best practice.
What should I do if I get this ACE question wrong?
Review block sizes, usable host formulas (2^n − 2), and how to find network and broadcast addresses for /24 through /30. Then practise related ACE subnetting questions on CIDR, address ranges, and subnet selection.
What is the key concept behind this question?
CIDR notation defines the prefix length.
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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.
Question Discussion
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