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GCDL Practice Question: An SRE team is practicing 'chaos engineering' by…
This GCDL practice question tests your understanding of an sre team is practicing 'chaos engineering' by…. 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.
An SRE team is practicing 'chaos engineering' by simulating a zone-level failure in their staging environment. They find that their application does not automatically recover — traffic is not redirected and the service remains down. What architectural component is most likely missing?
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.
A
Distractor review
The application needs more replicas in the failing zone to survive the failure
More replicas in the failing zone doesn't help when the zone itself is unavailable — all replicas in a failed zone are equally inaccessible. Replicas must be distributed across multiple zones.
B
Best answer
A load balancer with health checks across multiple zones is most likely missing — without it, there is no mechanism to detect the zone failure and automatically redirect traffic to healthy instances in surviving zones
The load balancer is the key component. It must be configured with backend instances in multiple zones and health checks enabled. When the health check detects that zone A instances are unhealthy, it automatically removes them from the rotation and sends all traffic to healthy instances in zones B and C. Without the load balancer, clients connect directly to zone A and have no fallback.
C
Distractor review
The application needs a larger machine type to handle the full traffic load without the failed zone's capacity
Larger machines in the remaining zones may be needed to handle full traffic, but this is a capacity concern, not the mechanism for automatic traffic redirection. The load balancer is the missing routing and detection component.
D
Distractor review
Cloud Monitoring alerts need to be configured to notify the team when a zone fails, enabling manual traffic redirection
Manual intervention after an alert is too slow for production availability. Automatic failover through a load balancer with health checks provides the immediate, automated response needed during a zone failure.
Common exam trap
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
Many certification questions include familiar terms but test a specific constraint. Read the exact wording before choosing an answer that is generally true but wrong for this case.
Technical deep dive
How to think about this question
This question should be treated as a scenario, not a definition check. Identify the problem, the constraint and the best action. Then compare each option against those facts.
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.
- Use explanations to understand the rule behind the answer.
TExam Day Tips
- Underline the problem statement mentally.
- 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.
Related practice questions
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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
A traditional retailer currently maintains its own data centers, purchasing servers every 3–5 years and paying for facilities, power, and staff regardless of demand. When it migrates its workloads to the public cloud, which change in cost model does it experience?
Question 2
An e-commerce company plans its infrastructure for peak shopping events (e.g., Black Friday) which drive 50× normal traffic. On-premises, they must maintain 50× capacity year-round. In the cloud, they provision 50× capacity only during peak periods. Which cloud characteristic enables this cost optimization?
Question 3
Which term describes the process by which organizations integrate digital technology into all areas of their business, fundamentally changing how they operate and deliver value to customers?
Question 4
When a company moves from maintaining its own data center to using Google Cloud, which operational responsibility does Google assume that the company previously managed?
Question 5
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?
Question 6
What is virtualization in the context of cloud computing, and why is it fundamental to how cloud providers deliver services?
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FAQ
Questions learners often ask
What does this GCDL question test?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: A load balancer with health checks across multiple zones is most likely missing — without it, there is no mechanism to detect the zone failure and automatically redirect traffic to healthy instances in surviving zones — For automatic traffic failover to a surviving zone during a zone failure, a global or regional load balancer with health checks is required. The load balancer continuously probes backend instance groups in each zone; when zone A's instances fail health checks, the load balancer automatically routes all traffic to zones B and C. Without a load balancer in front of the multi-zone backend, there is no mechanism to detect failure and redirect traffic.
What should I do if I get this GCDL question wrong?
Identify which GCDL exam domain this question belongs to, then review the specific concept being tested. Practise related questions in that domain and focus on understanding why each wrong answer is tempting — not just why the correct answer is right.
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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.