Fundamental cloud concepts

What is horizontal scaling, and how does it differ from vertical scaling?

A startup needs to run a web application with unpredictable traffic. They want to avoid over-provisioning and only pay for resources used. Which cloud benefit best addresses this need?

A company plans to run a batch processing job every night for 2 hours. They want to minimize costs while ensuring the job completes within a 4-hour window. Which pricing model should they choose?

A company's application is called 'stateless' because it doesn't store any user session data in the application server's memory. Each request contains all necessary information. Why is statelessness important for cloud scalability?

Google Cloud bills Compute Engine VMs per second (after a 1-minute minimum). A batch job runs for exactly 3 minutes and 47 seconds. How many minutes does Google Cloud charge for?

A small business wants to host a low-traffic website with a single-page application. They have limited budget and no IT staff. Which Google Cloud solution is most cost-effective and easy to manage?

A company wants to ensure that no employee can accidentally delete critical data stored in Cloud Storage. They need a solution that protects against accidental deletion even by users with full permissions. Which approach should they use?

An organization is planning to adopt cloud services but needs to understand which party is responsible for physical security of the data center. Under the shared responsibility model, who is responsible for physical data center security in a public cloud deployment?

A company wants to reduce latency for IoT devices located in remote areas with poor connectivity. They need to preprocess data locally before sending it to the cloud. Which architecture should they use?

A cloud architect is explaining to executives why they should use managed services (like Cloud SQL, Memorystore, Pub/Sub) instead of running self-managed equivalents on VMs (PostgreSQL on VM, Redis on VM, RabbitMQ on VM). Which argument best captures the strategic rationale for preferring managed services?

Match each Google Cloud pricing concept to its definition.

A startup is building a web application and wants to avoid managing servers or operating systems. They need to deploy code quickly and scale automatically. Which cloud service model best meets these requirements?

An organization wants to modernize its on-premises applications. The IT team identifies three types of applications: legacy apps that can only move with significant refactoring, custom-built apps that can be containerized and moved as-is, and applications that can be replaced entirely by SaaS solutions. This categorization approach is called what?

A software team is using Google Cloud and wants to understand the difference between 'scaling up' (vertical scaling) and 'scaling out' (horizontal scaling) for their web application. Which description correctly distinguishes these two approaches?

A company wants to use computing resources over the internet without managing physical servers. The cloud provider manages the underlying hardware and virtualization, while the company manages the operating system, middleware, and applications. Which cloud service model does this describe?

A retail company experiences heavy traffic during holiday sales and low traffic at other times. Which cloud computing characteristic is most beneficial for handling this variable workload?

An architect is evaluating trade-offs between using Google Cloud's global network backbone for application traffic versus routing traffic over the public internet. She notes that Google's global network is one of the largest private networks in the world. What is the primary performance advantage of routing application traffic over Google's private backbone?

A small business runs a single Linux server on-premises for file storage and a simple static website. They experience frequent power outages causing server downtime, and they want to improve availability with minimal cost and management overhead. They have limited IT staff. What should they do?

What does 'serverless computing' mean, and what does a developer NOT have to manage when using serverless services?

A media streaming company runs its video transcoding pipeline on Google Cloud. The pipeline uses Compute Engine instances with GPU accelerators to process videos. The instances are started and stopped by a custom scheduler based on a Cloud Pub/Sub queue of new video uploads. Recently, the team noticed that transcoding jobs are failing intermittently with 'Out of memory' errors on some instances, and the overall cost has increased by 30% over the past month. The operations team reports that the same job configurations used to succeed before. The pipeline does not use any managed instance groups or autoscaling; each job provisions its own instance manually via a script. The company wants to reduce failures and costs. Which course of action should they take?

A company is evaluating whether to use a public cloud (Google Cloud), a private cloud (on-premises VMware), or a managed private cloud (hosted single-tenant environment). Which scenario is the strongest argument for choosing a managed private cloud over a public cloud?

A company's finance director asks: 'If we move to cloud, do we need to buy fewer servers?' An IT architect responds that the answer depends on whether the company is adopting IaaS, PaaS, or SaaS. How does the service model affect hardware ownership?

A company is comparing the total cost of keeping its data center versus moving to public cloud. An analyst argues that the comparison should include not just hardware costs but also facility costs. What facility costs should be included in the on-premises total cost of ownership calculation?

A data analytics company uses BigQuery for large-scale queries. They notice that some queries are very expensive due to scanning large amounts of data. They want to reduce costs without changing query logic. Which feature should they use?

Refer to the exhibit. A user receives this error when trying to copy an object from one bucket to another. What is the most likely cause?

Match each Google Cloud networking concept to its description.

A developer is building a real-time collaborative document editing application (similar to Google Docs). Users must see each other's edits instantly. Which data consistency model is required for this use case, and what is the implication for the database choice?

A business leader asks: 'What is the difference between a data center region and an availability zone in Google Cloud?' Which explanation is most accurate?

What is the key difference between a virtual machine (VM) and a container in terms of how they package and run applications?

A startup wants to deploy a web application globally and expects traffic to be unpredictable — sometimes very low, sometimes very high. Which cloud characteristic ensures the startup only pays for the compute resources it actually uses?

A non-technical manager asks what a 'virtual machine' is and how it differs from the physical servers the company used to run in its own data center. Which explanation is most accurate and accessible?

What is virtualization in the context of cloud computing, and why is it fundamental to how cloud providers deliver services?

A company's cloud spending suddenly spikes by 300% for one week before returning to normal. The cloud team investigates and finds a developer accidentally left a large cluster of VMs running over the weekend. Which cloud financial management practice most effectively prevents this type of unexpected cost spike?

An architect explains that her cloud application uses a 'loosely coupled architecture.' She contrasts it with a tightly coupled on-premises system where all components run in a single process. What is the primary operational benefit of loose coupling in a cloud environment?

An organization runs its entire infrastructure on a single public cloud provider (Google Cloud). All applications, data, and services live in Google Cloud's infrastructure. Which deployment model describes this?

A company's monolithic application is difficult to update because any change requires testing and redeploying the entire application, causing multi-hour downtime during updates. The team is considering a microservices architecture. What is the primary benefit of microservices in this context?

A company's security team wants to control which resources on the internet can communicate with their virtual machines in Google Cloud. Which fundamental cloud networking concept provides this control?

A startup is building a gaming application where players must see each other's moves in real time. The database storing game state must guarantee that all players see the same state simultaneously. Which consistency requirement does this impose and why does it matter for database selection?

A company architect is explaining cloud network connectivity options to executives. She distinguishes between using the public internet to connect to cloud services versus using a dedicated private connection. What is the primary advantage of a dedicated private connection over the public internet for enterprise workloads?

An architect proposes using a 'private cloud' deployment model for a company that wants cloud-like capabilities but is prohibited from using public cloud due to data residency regulations. What is a key advantage of private cloud compared to public cloud, and what is a significant trade-off?

Drag and drop the steps to migrate an on-premises MySQL database to Cloud SQL using Database Migration Service into the correct order.

A hospital runs a patient records system that must remain on-premises due to strict regulatory data residency requirements. However, they also want to use cloud-based AI for diagnostic imaging analysis. Which cloud deployment model best describes their architecture?

An organization wants to ensure business continuity by replicating critical data to a different region. Which Google Cloud feature should they use?

A large enterprise is evaluating moving its data analytics workloads to Google Cloud. Which TWO factors should they consider when comparing on-premises costs to cloud costs? (Choose two.)

A business user asks what makes cloud storage different from simply buying a larger external hard drive for the office. Which characteristic most clearly differentiates cloud storage from local storage devices?

A global enterprise must store customer data in specific geographic regions to comply with data residency laws. They also need to be able to analyze data across all regions without centralizing it. Which approach best balances compliance and analytics?

A company migrates its on-premises database to Cloud SQL. The security team is concerned about who is responsible for patching the underlying operating system and database engine. Under the shared responsibility model, which of the following is true?

A company is migrating its on-premises data center to Google Cloud. They want to avoid large upfront hardware costs and only pay for the resources they consume. Which cloud benefit does this represent?

Which TWO of the following are key benefits of using a cloud provider like Google Cloud? (Choose exactly 2.)

A product manager wants to understand what 'latency' means for her company's cloud-hosted e-commerce application. Her developer explains that latency is critical for user experience. Which definition of latency is most accurate in this context?

A company's on-premises applications occasionally need more compute capacity than their own infrastructure can provide (during seasonal peaks). They want to use cloud resources to handle the overflow traffic while keeping base workloads on-premises. Which cloud architectural pattern describes this?

A large financial institution has a hybrid cloud strategy with sensitive data stored on-premises and customer-facing applications in Google Cloud. They need low-latency access between on-premises databases and cloud applications, but also require encryption in transit and strong access controls. The on-premises network uses non-google-compatible routing protocols. Which solution should they implement?

When choosing a Google Cloud region for a new application, which factors should primarily drive the decision?

A company hosts a web application that receives requests from users globally. To handle failures, they run three identical copies of their application behind a load balancer. When one copy fails, the load balancer automatically stops sending traffic to it. What load balancing feature enables this?

A company uses two different public cloud providers (AWS for their North American operations and Google Cloud for their European operations) to meet data residency requirements and avoid vendor lock-in. Which deployment model does this represent?

A small business wants to host a static website with minimal management overhead. They want high availability and low cost. Which Google Cloud service should they use?

A company's application uses a relational database for transactional data (orders, payments) and a separate NoSQL database for user session data and product catalog. Why might an architect choose two different database types for the same application?

A financial services firm is migrating a legacy application to Google Cloud. The application requires static IP addresses that must not change during migration. The network team wants to minimize downtime. Which migration strategy should they use?

What is DevOps, and how does cloud adoption reinforce DevOps practices?

A company runs a batch processing job every night that takes 6 hours on a fixed number of virtual machines. They want to reduce costs without increasing job duration. Which strategy should they use?

What is an API (Application Programming Interface), and why is it fundamental to cloud services and digital transformation?

A solutions architect is explaining why using managed cloud database services (like Cloud SQL or Cloud Spanner) is preferable to running a database on a self-managed virtual machine in most cases. What is the primary operational advantage of managed database services over self-managed databases on VMs?

A developer needs to run a custom analysis script on a large dataset once a month. The script runs for about 10 minutes. They want to avoid provisioning servers and only pay for the actual compute time used. Which Google Cloud compute option should they choose?

A company's finance team wants to understand why their cloud bills vary significantly month to month, unlike their fixed on-premises IT costs. Which fundamental cloud pricing characteristic explains this variability?

A company is planning a cloud migration and wants to understand the difference between 'lift and shift' and 'cloud-native' approaches. Which statement correctly distinguishes these two migration strategies?

A startup needs to quickly deploy a web application with minimal infrastructure management. They want to focus on code, not servers. Which Google Cloud service model is most appropriate?

A company is evaluating whether to use a content delivery network (CDN) for its e-commerce website. Which scenario would most benefit from CDN implementation?

Which term describes the model where the cloud provider is responsible for the security of the cloud infrastructure, while the customer is responsible for security within their own cloud environment (data, applications, access management)?

A company runs a critical application on Compute Engine in us-central1. They plan to create a disaster recovery (DR) site in us-west1 that can be activated within minutes if the primary region fails. What is the most cost-effective DR strategy that meets the recovery time objective (RTO) of 30 minutes?

Which THREE of the following are compute services offered by Google Cloud? (Choose exactly 3.)

A developer wants to run her application code without managing any servers, operating systems, or runtime environments. She wants to focus entirely on writing business logic. Which cloud service model best fits this requirement?

Which TWO of the following are common use cases for deploying workloads to the cloud? (Choose 2)

An architect is evaluating whether to use a relational database or a NoSQL database for a new application that must store product catalog data. Products have highly variable attributes — a book has ISBN, author, and genre; a bicycle has frame size, wheel diameter, and material. Which database characteristic makes NoSQL document databases advantageous for this use case?

Drag and drop the steps to set up a Cloud Storage bucket with uniform bucket-level access into the correct order.

A company's cloud architect explains that their new system uses 'eventual consistency' for some data operations. A business stakeholder asks why the system won't always show the most up-to-date data immediately. What is the trade-off being made?

A team uses Google Workspace (Gmail, Docs, Sheets) for their daily work. They do not manage any servers or software installation — Google maintains everything. Which cloud service model does Google Workspace represent?

A CTO explains to her board that moving to cloud reduces the company's 'total cost of ownership' compared to running an on-premises data center. Which cost category is most commonly underestimated in on-premises TCO calculations?

What does 'durability' mean for cloud storage services, and how is it different from 'availability'?

What is 'infrastructure as code' (IaC), and what problem does it solve compared to manually configuring cloud resources through a web console?

Which THREE of the following are common benefits of adopting a cloud infrastructure compared to on-premises? (Choose 3)

What is the difference between RTO (Recovery Time Objective) and RPO (Recovery Point Objective) in disaster recovery planning?

Refer to the exhibit. What level of access does this IAM policy grant to the members?

A Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) in Google Cloud provides network isolation. What does 'network isolation' mean in this context, and why is it important?

A company has a production database running on Cloud SQL. They need to perform maintenance on the primary instance without downtime. Which feature allows this?

A company is deciding whether to store a large video archive (hundreds of terabytes, accessed perhaps twice per year for legal holds) in Google Cloud. Which Cloud Storage class is designed for this infrequently accessed, long-term archival use case?

A web application's homepage loads user-specific data (shopping cart, recent orders) on every visit. The data changes frequently. An engineer suggests caching this data in a Redis cache between the web tier and the database. What is the primary benefit of this caching layer?

A company's IT team is planning its network architecture for a Google Cloud deployment. They want to ensure that their development, staging, and production environments are completely isolated from each other at the network level. What is the most effective way to achieve this isolation in Google Cloud?

What does 'high availability' mean in the context of cloud services, and how is it typically measured?

A product manager asks a cloud engineer: 'What exactly is an API, and why is it important for our cloud-based application?' Which explanation is most accurate and useful for a non-technical product manager?

A business analyst needs to understand why cloud services bill differently for compute (VMs) versus object storage. Compute VMs are billed per second while they are running; Cloud Storage is billed per GB-month of data stored. Which cloud pricing principle explains why these billing units are different?

Refer to the exhibit. A data processing job must complete within 2 hours. The job can be interrupted but must resume from the last checkpoint. Which two instances should be used to minimize cost while meeting the requirement?

According to the NIST definition of cloud computing, which characteristic allows users to unilaterally provision computing resources such as server time and network storage without requiring human interaction with the service provider?

Which TWO of the following are key characteristics of cloud computing as defined by NIST? (Choose 2)

A retail company stores petabytes of customer transaction data for compliance reasons. They access data less than once a year but must retain it for 10 years. They want the lowest-cost storage. Which storage class should they choose?

A company is planning a cloud architecture and needs to decide between a monolithic application design and a microservices architecture. What is the most significant operational trade-off between these two approaches in a cloud environment?

A mid-size company runs a batch processing application on a single on-premises server. The processing time varies; during month-end, the workload spikes and the server becomes overloaded, causing delays. The company wants a solution that automatically scales resources for peak times and only pays for extra capacity when used. They are considering migrating to Google Cloud. Which approach meets their needs?

Which TWO of the following are important considerations when designing a cloud solution for data residency compliance? (Choose exactly 2.)

A solutions architect is designing a system that must remain available even if an entire Google Cloud region becomes unavailable due to a major disaster. Which deployment approach achieves this goal?