Google PCA Design and plan a cloud solution architecture Practice Question
This PCA practice question tests your understanding of design and plan a cloud solution architecture. 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 media company wants to serve publicly available images and videos to a global audience with low latency. Which Google Cloud service should they primarily use?
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Cloud CDN with Cloud Storage as the origin.
Cloud CDN with Cloud Storage as the origin is the correct choice because it uses Google's global edge cache to serve publicly available images and videos from Cloud Storage, minimizing latency for a global audience. Cloud CDN caches content at edge locations worldwide, reducing the round-trip time to the origin bucket, while Cloud Storage provides scalable, durable object storage. This combination is purpose-built for delivering static content with low latency and high throughput.
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.
✗
Cloud Storage with public bucket serving the files.
Why it's wrong here
Cloud Storage directly serves content but without edge caching, resulting in higher latency; CDN is needed for global scale.
✓
Cloud CDN with Cloud Storage as the origin.
Why this is correct
Cloud CDN caches content from Cloud Storage at edge locations, reducing latency for global users.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Cloud Run with a container that serves the files.
Why it's wrong here
Cloud Run is serverless compute and not optimized for serving static files globally; it would still benefit from a CDN.
✗
Compute Engine with an HTTP server.
Why it's wrong here
Compute Engine instances in a region would have higher latency for global users compared to CDN.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates often choose Cloud Storage with a public bucket (Option A) because it seems simplest, overlooking that Cloud CDN is required to achieve global low-latency delivery by caching content at edge locations.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Cloud CDN leverages Google's global network of edge points of presence (PoPs) to cache content closer to users, using HTTP cache-control headers (e.g., Cache-Control: public, max-age=3600) to determine cache duration. When a cache miss occurs, Cloud CDN fetches the object from the Cloud Storage origin via a secure, low-latency Google network path, then serves it from the edge for subsequent requests. In a real-world scenario, a media company serving 4K video thumbnails would see a 50-80% reduction in latency for users in distant regions compared to direct Cloud Storage access.
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 media company stores terabytes of video archives that are accessed once a year for audit purposes. Moving these objects to a cold storage tier (Azure Archive, S3 Glacier, or Google Nearline) costs a fraction of hot storage. Questions like this test whether you understand storage tiers, access frequency tradeoffs, and retrieval latency requirements.
Related glossary terms
Concepts from this question explained
These glossary pages explain the core terms tested in this PCA question in full detail.
Design and plan a cloud solution architecture — This question tests Design and plan a cloud solution architecture — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Cloud CDN with Cloud Storage as the origin. — Cloud CDN with Cloud Storage as the origin is the correct choice because it uses Google's global edge cache to serve publicly available images and videos from Cloud Storage, minimizing latency for a global audience. Cloud CDN caches content at edge locations worldwide, reducing the round-trip time to the origin bucket, while Cloud Storage provides scalable, durable object storage. This combination is purpose-built for delivering static content with low latency and high throughput.
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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