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 team is designing a disaster recovery (DR) plan for a critical application. Which THREE components are essential for a robust DR plan? (Choose 3)
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Failover procedures and runbooks
Failover procedures and runbooks (A) are essential because they provide step-by-step instructions for executing a controlled transition to the secondary site, ensuring minimal downtime and consistent recovery actions. Without documented runbooks, teams risk misconfigurations during a disaster, which can extend recovery time objectives (RTO) beyond acceptable limits.
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.
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✓
Regular backups to a separate region
Why this is correct
Backups in a different region protect against regional disasters.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
A single-region deployment for consistency
Why it's wrong here
A single-region deployment is vulnerable to regional outages.
✓
Monitoring and alerting for disaster events
Why this is correct
Alerting triggers the DR process when failures occur.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Load testing to validate performance
Why it's wrong here
Load testing is part of performance testing, not core to DR plan.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
Google Cloud often tests the misconception that a single-region deployment is acceptable for DR if it has high availability within that region, but the exam emphasizes that DR requires geographic separation to survive a full regional failure.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Robust DR plans rely on asynchronous replication (e.g., using AWS S3 Cross-Region Replication or Azure Geo-Redundant Storage) to maintain data consistency across regions while minimizing latency. Failover runbooks should include specific DNS TTL adjustments (e.g., lowering to 60 seconds) and database failover commands (e.g., AWS RDS promote-read-replica) to meet strict RTOs. Monitoring and alerting (D) must detect region-level failures via health checks (e.g., Route 53 health checks or Azure Traffic Manager endpoints) and trigger automated failover workflows.
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.
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: Failover procedures and runbooks — Failover procedures and runbooks (A) are essential because they provide step-by-step instructions for executing a controlled transition to the secondary site, ensuring minimal downtime and consistent recovery actions. Without documented runbooks, teams risk misconfigurations during a disaster, which can extend recovery time objectives (RTO) beyond acceptable limits.
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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