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.
Which THREE are best practices for designing a highly available application on Compute Engine?
Clue words in this question
Noticing these words before you look at the options changes how you read each choice.
Clue: "best"
Why it matters: Signals that multiple options may be partially correct. Choose the option that most directly solves the exact problem described, not the one that sounds most complete.
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Use managed instance groups with autoscaling
Managed instance groups (MIGs) with autoscaling are a best practice for high availability because they automatically maintain a target number of healthy instances across zones, replacing failed instances and scaling based on load. This ensures the application can withstand instance failures and traffic spikes without manual intervention, directly supporting high availability.
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.
✗
Use local SSDs for stateful data
Why it's wrong here
Local SSDs are ephemeral and data is lost on instance failure.
✗
Use a single large machine type
Why it's wrong here
A single machine is a single point of failure.
✓
Use managed instance groups with autoscaling
Why this is correct
Managed instance groups automatically handle scaling and healing.
Clue confirmation
The clue word "best" in the question point toward this answer.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✓
Use an external load balancer with health checks
Why this is correct
Load balancer distributes traffic and health checks ensure only healthy instances serve.
Clue confirmation
The clue word "best" in the question point toward this answer.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✓
Distribute instances across multiple zones
Why this is correct
Multi-zone distribution provides zonal fault tolerance.
Clue confirmation
The clue word "best" in the question point toward this answer.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
Google Cloud often tests the misconception that local SSDs are suitable for stateful data in HA designs, but the trap is that local SSDs are ephemeral and data is lost on instance failure, so they should only be used for cache or temporary data, not for persistent state.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Under the hood, managed instance groups use the Compute Engine instance template to create instances and rely on health checks (HTTP, HTTPS, TCP, or SSL) to determine instance liveness; unhealthy instances are automatically recreated. Autoscaling policies can be based on CPU utilization, load balancing serving capacity, or Stackdriver metrics, and when combined with multi-zone deployment, the MIG distributes instances across zones to protect against zonal failures. A real-world scenario is a web application that uses a regional external HTTP(S) load balancer with a backend service pointing to a multi-zone MIG, ensuring traffic is routed away from failed instances and zones.
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.
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: Use managed instance groups with autoscaling — Managed instance groups (MIGs) with autoscaling are a best practice for high availability because they automatically maintain a target number of healthy instances across zones, replacing failed instances and scaling based on load. This ensures the application can withstand instance failures and traffic spikes without manual intervention, directly supporting high availability.
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.
Are there clue words in this question I should notice?
Yes — watch for: "best". Signals that multiple options may be partially correct. Choose the option that most directly solves the exact problem described, not the one that sounds most complete.
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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