This PCA practice question tests your understanding of ensure solution and operations reliability. 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 organization needs to meet a RTO of 1 hour for a critical application running on GCE with persistent disks. What is the most cost-effective approach?
Use regional persistent disks.
Synchronous replication, fast failover.
Replica of compute instance in another zone.
Why wrong: Incurs ongoing compute costs.
Frequent disk image exports.
Why wrong: Exports are slow and costly.
Regular snapshots to a regional bucket.
Why wrong: Restore time may exceed RTO.
Answer choices
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
Use regional persistent disks.
Regional persistent disks (PD) provide synchronous replication of data between two zones in the same region, enabling automatic failover for a GCE instance without manual intervention. This meets the 1-hour RTO by allowing the instance to be recreated or failed over to the secondary zone quickly, and it is more cost-effective than maintaining a full replica instance because you only pay for the disk storage and replication, not for an idle compute instance.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Answer analysis
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
Use regional persistent disks.
Why this is correct
Synchronous replication, fast failover.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Replica of compute instance in another zone.
Why it's wrong here
Incurs ongoing compute costs.
Frequent disk image exports.
Why it's wrong here
Exports are slow and costly.
Regular snapshots to a regional bucket.
Why it's wrong here
Restore time may exceed RTO.
Common exam traps
The trap here is that candidates often confuse regional persistent disks with snapshots or image exports, assuming that any backup method can meet a strict RTO, but they overlook the synchronous replication and automatic failover capability of regional PDs that make them the most cost-effective for this requirement.
Detailed technical explanation
Regional persistent disks use synchronous replication at the block level across two zones within the same region, ensuring that writes are acknowledged only after being committed to both zones. This provides a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of effectively zero, as data is consistent across zones. In a real-world scenario, if the primary zone fails, you can attach the regional PD to a new instance in the secondary zone and start the application within minutes, meeting the 1-hour RTO without needing to restore from a backup.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
A startup's cloud architect reviews their monthly bill and notices costs are higher than expected for a long-running batch job. Switching from on-demand instances to Reserved Instances — or using Spot/Preemptible VMs — can reduce compute costs by up to 72 %. Questions like this test whether you understand the tradeoffs between commitment, flexibility, and cost across cloud pricing models.
What to study next
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FAQ
Ensure solution and operations reliability — This question tests Ensure solution and operations reliability — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
The correct answer is: Use regional persistent disks. — Regional persistent disks (PD) provide synchronous replication of data between two zones in the same region, enabling automatic failover for a GCE instance without manual intervention. This meets the 1-hour RTO by allowing the instance to be recreated or failed over to the secondary zone quickly, and it is more cost-effective than maintaining a full replica instance because you only pay for the disk storage and replication, not for an idle compute instance.
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Last reviewed: Jun 25, 2026
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