Google PCA Ensure solution and operations reliability Practice Question
This PCA practice question tests your understanding of ensure solution and operations reliability. The scenario asks you to isolate a root cause — eliminate options that address a different problem before choosing. 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.
You are deploying a stateless web application on Compute Engine. Which TWO actions improve availability? (Choose 2)
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Use a regional managed instance group.
A regional managed instance group (MIG) distributes instances across multiple zones within a region, ensuring that if one zone fails, traffic is automatically routed to healthy instances in other zones. This provides high availability by eliminating a single zone of failure, which is critical for stateless web applications that can serve requests from any instance.
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 a regional managed instance group.
Why this is correct
Regional MIGs spread instances across zones; if one zone fails, other zones continue serving.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Enable Cloud CDN for the static content.
Why it's wrong here
Cloud CDN improves latency for static content but does not help with compute instance availability.
✗
Purchase 1-year committed use contracts for the instances.
Why it's wrong here
Committed use does not affect availability; it provides discounts.
✓
Enable automatic restart on the instance template.
Why this is correct
Auto restart recreates instances that crash due to hardware failure.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Use preemptible VMs to reduce cost.
Why it's wrong here
Preemptible VMs can be terminated by Google at any time, reducing reliability.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
Google Cloud often tests the distinction between cost optimization (committed use contracts, preemptible VMs) and availability improvements, leading candidates to mistakenly choose financial commitments or caching services as availability solutions.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Regional MIGs use autohealing based on health checks (e.g., HTTP/S, TCP) to automatically recreate unhealthy instances, and they support multi-zone distribution with load balancing via the Google Cloud Load Balancer, which uses anycast IPs to route traffic to the closest healthy backend. Under the hood, the MIG's instance template defines the machine configuration, and the group's autoscaler can adjust instance count based on utilization metrics, ensuring capacity across zones. In a real-world scenario, a regional MIG with a global external HTTP(S) load balancer can survive a full zone outage without manual intervention, as the load balancer's health checks detect failures and stop sending traffic to that zone.
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 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.
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: Use a regional managed instance group. — A regional managed instance group (MIG) distributes instances across multiple zones within a region, ensuring that if one zone fails, traffic is automatically routed to healthy instances in other zones. This provides high availability by eliminating a single zone of failure, which is critical for stateless web applications that can serve requests from any instance.
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.
About these practice questions
Courseiva creates original exam-style practice questions with explanations and wrong-answer analysis. It does not publish real exam questions, exam dumps, or protected exam content. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
Share a tip, memory trick, or ask about the reasoning behind this question. Do not post real exam questions, leaked content, braindumps, or copyrighted exam material. Comments are moderated and may be removed without notice.
This PCA practice question is part of Courseiva's free Google Cloud certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the PCA exam.
Question Discussion
Share a tip, memory trick, or ask about the reasoning behind this question. Do not post real exam questions, leaked content, braindumps, or copyrighted exam material. Comments are moderated and may be removed without notice.
Sign in to join the discussion.