PCD Practice Question: Designing highly scalable, available, and reliable cloud-native applications
This PCD practice question tests your understanding of designing highly scalable, available, and reliable cloud-native applications. 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 company is deploying a global microservices application on Cloud Run. They need to design for high availability, scalability, and low latency. Which three practices should they implement? (Choose three.)
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Enable Cloud CDN for caching static assets.
Option B is correct because Cloud CDN caches static assets at Google's global edge locations, reducing latency for users worldwide and offloading requests from Cloud Run. This improves performance for static content like images, CSS, and JavaScript, which is essential for a global microservices application requiring low latency.
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 Cloud Scheduler to trigger services periodically.
Why it's wrong here
Cloud Scheduler is for cron jobs, not for traffic handling.
✓
Enable Cloud CDN for caching static assets.
Why this is correct
CDN caches content at edge locations, reducing latency.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Set a limit on the number of Cloud Run containers per revision to control costs.
Use a global HTTP(S) Load Balancer with serverless NEGs to route traffic.
Why this is correct
Global LB with serverless NEGs enables intelligent traffic distribution across regions.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✓
Deploy Cloud Run services in multiple Google Cloud regions.
Why this is correct
Multi-region deployment provides regional failover and lower latency.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
Cisco often tests the misconception that cost-control measures like container limits are compatible with high scalability, but in practice, capping containers throttles autoscaling and violates the scalability requirement.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Cloud CDN leverages Google's global edge cache points of presence (PoPs) to serve cached content from the nearest location, using HTTP cache headers like Cache-Control and ETag for validation. Under the hood, it integrates with the global HTTP(S) Load Balancer, which uses anycast IPs to route requests to the closest backend, including serverless NEGs for Cloud Run. In a real-world scenario, a global e-commerce app can serve product images from CDN while dynamic API calls go directly to Cloud Run, reducing origin load by up to 80%.
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.
What to study next
Got this wrong? Here's your next step.
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
Designing highly scalable, available, and reliable cloud-native applications — This question tests Designing highly scalable, available, and reliable cloud-native applications — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Enable Cloud CDN for caching static assets. — Option B is correct because Cloud CDN caches static assets at Google's global edge locations, reducing latency for users worldwide and offloading requests from Cloud Run. This improves performance for static content like images, CSS, and JavaScript, which is essential for a global microservices application requiring low latency.
What should I do if I get this PCD 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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