Google PCA Manage and provision cloud infrastructure Practice Question
This PCA practice question tests your understanding of manage and provision cloud infrastructure. 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 is migrating a monolithic e-commerce application to Google Cloud. The application has been refactored into microservices. Most services are stateless and can run on Cloud Run. However, the checkout service requires maintaining session state across multiple requests, and the session data must be available globally for low latency. The application will be deployed in multiple regions to serve a global user base. Which approach should the company take?
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Deploy the checkout service on Cloud Run in multiple regions, and use Memorystore (Redis) with replication as the session store
Option C is correct because Memorystore (Redis) with replication provides a globally accessible, low-latency session store that can be used by Cloud Run instances in multiple regions. Redis replication ensures data durability and high availability, while Cloud Run's stateless nature is complemented by externalizing session state to a managed caching layer. This architecture meets the requirement for global session data availability without coupling state to individual compute 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.
✗
Run the checkout service on Compute Engine with regional managed instance groups and Cloud Filestore
Why it's wrong here
Cloud Filestore is not designed for low-latency session data; adds operational overhead.
✗
Use Cloud Run with session affinity and in-memory caching within each instance
Why it's wrong here
Session affinity is not reliable and does not share state across regions.
✓
Deploy the checkout service on Cloud Run in multiple regions, and use Memorystore (Redis) with replication as the session store
Why this is correct
Cloud Run can scale globally, and Memorystore provides a fast, shared session store.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Deploy the checkout service on Google Kubernetes Engine using StatefulSets and regional persistent disks
Why it's wrong here
Overly complex; not ideal for global low-latency sessions.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates may assume session affinity (sticky sessions) is sufficient for stateful services on Cloud Run, but they overlook that Cloud Run instances are stateless and ephemeral, making external session storage like Redis mandatory for global, durable session management.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Memorystore for Redis uses the Redis replication protocol (e.g., Redis Sentinel or Cluster mode) to provide automatic failover and read replicas, enabling low-latency reads from multiple regions when combined with a global load balancer. Cloud Run can connect to Redis via a VPC or Serverless VPC Access, and the session data is stored as key-value pairs with TTL (time-to-live) to handle session expiration. In a real-world scenario, this pattern is common for e-commerce checkout flows where session state must survive instance restarts and scale horizontally across regions.
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 company's IT admin needs to give a contractor read-only access to production logs without sharing account credentials. Using role-based access control (RBAC) and temporary scoped permissions — not a permanent shared password — is the correct pattern. Questions like this test whether you can apply least-privilege access across cloud identity services.
Related glossary terms
Concepts from this question explained
These glossary pages explain the core terms tested in this PCA question in full detail.
Manage and provision cloud infrastructure — This question tests Manage and provision cloud infrastructure — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Deploy the checkout service on Cloud Run in multiple regions, and use Memorystore (Redis) with replication as the session store — Option C is correct because Memorystore (Redis) with replication provides a globally accessible, low-latency session store that can be used by Cloud Run instances in multiple regions. Redis replication ensures data durability and high availability, while Cloud Run's stateless nature is complemented by externalizing session state to a managed caching layer. This architecture meets the requirement for global session data availability without coupling state to individual compute instances.
What should I do if I get this PCA 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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