Cloud Digital Leader Practice Question: Google Cloud products, services, and solutions
This GCDL practice question tests your understanding of google cloud products, services, and solutions. 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.
A company uses Cloud Spanner for a global application. They need to ensure high availability and disaster recovery across regions. Which TWO actions should they take? (Choose 2)
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Schedule regular backups using Cloud Spanner backup feature
Option B is correct because Cloud Spanner's built-in backup feature allows you to create consistent backups of your database without impacting performance, and these backups can be restored to a different region for disaster recovery. This provides a reliable way to recover from regional failures or data corruption, ensuring high availability and DR across regions.
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.
✗
Deploy the database in a single region with backups
Why it's wrong here
Backups alone don't ensure immediate failover; multi-region is required for regional failover.
✓
Schedule regular backups using Cloud Spanner backup feature
Why this is correct
Backups protect against data loss and allow point-in-time recovery.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Configure read replicas in a different region
Why it's wrong here
Spanner does not use read replicas; it uses multi-region configs with automatic replication.
✗
Use Cloud Memorystore to cache database queries
Why it's wrong here
Caching is not a disaster recovery measure.
✓
Use a multi-region instance configuration
Why this is correct
Spanner multi-region provides synchronous replication across regions for HA.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
Google Cloud often tests the misconception that read replicas or caching services like Memorystore can provide cross-region disaster recovery, but Cloud Spanner's architecture relies on synchronous multi-region replication and backups, not asynchronous replicas or external caches.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Cloud Spanner's multi-region instance configuration uses synchronous replication across multiple regions, providing strong consistency and automatic failover with an RPO of zero and RTO of minutes. The backup feature creates full backups that are stored in the same region by default but can be copied to another region for DR, and restores can be performed to any region, leveraging Spanner's global infrastructure. In a real-world scenario, a multi-region instance can survive the loss of an entire region without manual intervention, while backups provide an additional safety net for accidental data deletion or corruption.
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
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 GCDL question in full detail.
Google Cloud products, services, and solutions — This question tests Google Cloud products, services, and solutions — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Schedule regular backups using Cloud Spanner backup feature — Option B is correct because Cloud Spanner's built-in backup feature allows you to create consistent backups of your database without impacting performance, and these backups can be restored to a different region for disaster recovery. This provides a reliable way to recover from regional failures or data corruption, ensuring high availability and DR across regions.
What should I do if I get this GCDL 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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This GCDL 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 GCDL exam.
Question Discussion
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