Google ACE Planning and configuring a cloud solution Practice Question
This ACE practice question tests your understanding of planning and configuring a cloud solution. Read the scenario carefully and evaluate each option against the stated constraints before committing to an answer. 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.
Your company runs a critical web application on a single Compute Engine instance. The application is not containerized and the team lacks DevOps experience. Management requires high availability for this application with minimal disruption to operations and low cost. The application serves dynamic content and uses a MySQL database running on the same instance. You need to design a solution. Which option should you choose?
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Create a snapshot of the instance, create an instance template, and set up a managed instance group with a load balancer.
Option A is correct because it leverages a Managed Instance Group (MIG) with an instance template created from a snapshot, which provides auto-healing and auto-scaling for high availability without requiring containerization or DevOps expertise. Combined with a load balancer, this solution distributes traffic across healthy instances, meeting the high-availability requirement with minimal operational overhead and low cost, as MIGs only charge for running instances.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
✓
Create a snapshot of the instance, create an instance template, and set up a managed instance group with a load balancer.
Why this is correct
Enables high availability with automated failover and scaling, using existing VM image.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Migrate the application to Cloud Storage and use a global HTTP(S) load balancer.
Why it's wrong here
Only works for static content; dynamic content requires compute.
✗
Deploy the application to App Engine and use traffic splitting between versions.
Why it's wrong here
Requires code modifications and may not support existing MySQL instance.
✗
Containerize the application using Cloud Run and configure traffic splitting.
Why it's wrong here
Requires containerization knowledge and code changes.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates may assume containerization (Option D) is always the best path to high availability, but the question explicitly states the team lacks DevOps experience, making containerization a high-risk, high-effort choice that violates the 'minimal disruption' and 'low cost' requirements.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
A Managed Instance Group uses an instance template to create identical VMs from a snapshot, enabling horizontal scaling and automatic recovery of failed instances via health checks. The load balancer (e.g., HTTP(S) or TCP) distributes traffic based on instance health, ensuring zero-downtime during failures. In practice, the MySQL database would need to be externalized to a separate service (e.g., Cloud SQL) for true high availability, but the question's constraints prioritize minimal disruption and low cost, so a single-region MIG with a snapshot-based template is the most pragmatic choice.
KKey Concepts to Remember
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Find the constraint that changes the correct option.
Eliminate answers that are true in general but not in this case.
TExam Day Tips
→Watch for words such as best, first, most likely and least administrative effort.
→Review why wrong options are wrong, not only why the correct option is correct.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
How this comes up in practice
A startup's cloud architect reviews their monthly bill and notices costs are higher than expected for a long-running batch job. Switching from on-demand instances to Reserved Instances — or using Spot/Preemptible VMs — can reduce compute costs by up to 72 %. Questions like this test whether you understand the tradeoffs between commitment, flexibility, and cost across cloud pricing models.
Related glossary terms
Concepts from this question explained
These glossary pages explain the core terms tested in this ACE question in full detail.
Planning and configuring a cloud solution — This question tests Planning and configuring a cloud solution — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Create a snapshot of the instance, create an instance template, and set up a managed instance group with a load balancer. — Option A is correct because it leverages a Managed Instance Group (MIG) with an instance template created from a snapshot, which provides auto-healing and auto-scaling for high availability without requiring containerization or DevOps expertise. Combined with a load balancer, this solution distributes traffic across healthy instances, meeting the high-availability requirement with minimal operational overhead and low cost, as MIGs only charge for running instances.
What should I do if I get this ACE question wrong?
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
What is the key concept behind this question?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Question Discussion
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