Google PCA Ensure solution and operations reliability Practice Question
This PCA practice question tests your understanding of ensure solution and operations reliability. This is a configuration task: choose the command set that satisfies every stated requirement. Small differences — like 'secret' vs 'password' or 'transport input ssh' vs 'all' — change whether the answer is correct. 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 runs a critical application on a Compute Engine instance. They want to ensure that the application remains available even if the instance crashes. Which two GCP features should they use? (Choose two.)
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Instance template with automatic restart.
Option C is correct because an instance template with automatic restart enables Compute Engine to automatically restart a VM instance if it crashes or is terminated due to a non-user-initiated failure. This feature is configured at the instance level and ensures that the application recovers quickly without manual intervention, improving availability for a single-instance workload.
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.
✗
Regular snapshots of the persistent disk.
Why it's wrong here
Snapshots are for data backup, not high availability.
✗
A load balancer distributing traffic to a single instance.
Why it's wrong here
A single instance is a single point of failure.
✓
Instance template with automatic restart.
Why this is correct
Automatic restart restarts the instance on host failure.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✓
Managed Instance Group with autohealing.
Why this is correct
Autohealing recreates instances if they become unhealthy.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
A Cloud CDN to cache static content.
Why it's wrong here
Cloud CDN does not provide instance availability.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates often confuse automatic restart (which handles VM crashes) with autohealing (which handles application-level failures), or incorrectly assume a load balancer alone provides high availability without a redundant backend.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Under the hood, the automatic restart feature relies on the Compute Engine hypervisor monitoring the VM's health via the instance's status (e.g., TERMINATED state). When a crash occurs, the hypervisor automatically re-creates the VM on the same or different host, preserving the persistent disk and attached resources. In a Managed Instance Group with autohealing, the group uses a health check (e.g., HTTP, TCP, or SSL) to detect application-level failures—not just VM crashes—and replaces unhealthy instances by re-creating them from the instance template, which is critical for multi-instance architectures.
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 PCA question in full detail.
Ensure solution and operations reliability — This question tests Ensure solution and operations reliability — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Instance template with automatic restart. — Option C is correct because an instance template with automatic restart enables Compute Engine to automatically restart a VM instance if it crashes or is terminated due to a non-user-initiated failure. This feature is configured at the instance level and ensures that the application recovers quickly without manual intervention, improving availability for a single-instance workload.
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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