This PCD practice question tests your understanding of managing application performance monitoring. 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 Cloud Run service is experiencing intermittent high latency. The team has enabled Cloud Trace. They want to identify the root cause by analyzing traces. What should they look for in the Trace viewer?
High container CPU usage
Why wrong: CPU usage is a metric, not a trace attribute.
Large number of concurrent requests
Why wrong: Concurrency is not directly visible in individual traces.
Frequent log entries with 'WARNING'
Why wrong: Logs are separate from traces; warnings may not indicate latency cause.
Spans with high latency and error status
High-latency spans pinpoint bottlenecks; errors indicate failures.
Answer choices
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
Spans with high latency and error status
In Cloud Trace, the root cause of intermittent high latency is identified by examining spans—the fundamental units representing work in a distributed system. Spans with high latency directly indicate where time is being spent, and an error status (e.g., HTTP 5xx or gRPC error codes) pinpoints a failure that could be causing retries or blocking, leading to the observed latency. This combination is the most direct signal for root cause analysis in trace data.
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.
High container CPU usage
Why it's wrong here
CPU usage is a metric, not a trace attribute.
Large number of concurrent requests
Why it's wrong here
Concurrency is not directly visible in individual traces.
Frequent log entries with 'WARNING'
Why it's wrong here
Logs are separate from traces; warnings may not indicate latency cause.
Spans with high latency and error status
Why this is correct
High-latency spans pinpoint bottlenecks; errors indicate failures.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Common exam traps
Cisco often tests the distinction between metrics (like CPU usage) and trace data (like spans), leading candidates to confuse operational monitoring signals with the specific diagnostic tools available in Cloud Trace.
Detailed technical explanation
Cloud Trace uses a distributed tracing model based on the OpenTelemetry standard, where each request is broken into spans that record start time, end time, and status code. High latency in a span often points to a downstream dependency (e.g., a database query or external API call) that is slow or failing, and the error status (e.g., HTTP 503 or gRPC UNAVAILABLE) confirms the issue. In practice, a single slow span with an error can cascade into client-side retries, amplifying latency across the system.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
A cloud solutions architect for a retail company is evaluating services for a new workload. The correct answer here reflects best practice for the specific scenario described — not a general cloud recommendation. Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option. Cloud exam questions reward reading the constraint carefully: the same technology can be right or wrong depending on the use case.
What to study next
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FAQ
Managing application performance monitoring — This question tests Managing application performance monitoring — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
The correct answer is: Spans with high latency and error status — In Cloud Trace, the root cause of intermittent high latency is identified by examining spans—the fundamental units representing work in a distributed system. Spans with high latency directly indicate where time is being spent, and an error status (e.g., HTTP 5xx or gRPC error codes) pinpoints a failure that could be causing retries or blocking, leading to the observed latency. This combination is the most direct signal for root cause analysis in trace data.
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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