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 designing a global e-commerce platform on Google Cloud. The application requires low-latency access for users worldwide and must be highly available. Which load balancing solution should they use?
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
External HTTP(S) Load Balancer
The External HTTP(S) Load Balancer is the correct choice because it is a global, proxy-based Layer 7 load balancer that terminates HTTP/HTTPS traffic at Google's edge points of presence (PoPs) and routes requests to the nearest healthy backend. This provides low-latency access for users worldwide by leveraging Google's global network and anycast IPs, while also offering built-in high availability, SSL offloading, and content-based routing.
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.
✗
External TCP/UDP Network Load Balancer
Why it's wrong here
External TCP/UDP Network Load Balancer is regional and does not support global traffic distribution.
✓
External HTTP(S) Load Balancer
Why this is correct
External HTTP(S) Load Balancer is a global load balancer that provides low latency and high availability for web applications.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Cloud CDN
Why it's wrong here
Cloud CDN is a content delivery network, not a load balancer. It caches content at edge locations but does not route traffic.
✗
Internal TCP/UDP Load Balancer
Why it's wrong here
Internal load balancers are used for internal traffic, not for global user-facing applications.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
Cisco often tests the misconception that a Layer 4 load balancer (like External TCP/UDP Network Load Balancer) is sufficient for global low-latency access, but candidates must remember that only Layer 7 global load balancers provide anycast IPs and cross-region routing for worldwide users.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
The External HTTP(S) Load Balancer uses Google Front End (GFE) servers at edge locations to terminate client connections and then proxies requests to backends over HTTP/1.1 or HTTP/2, supporting features like URL rewriting, header manipulation, and health checks. It supports global anycast IPs (e.g., 130.211.0.0/22 and 35.191.0.0/16) that route users to the nearest GFE, and it can span multiple regions with automatic failover if a backend service becomes unhealthy. A real-world scenario is an e-commerce platform with backends in us-central1 and europe-west1, where the load balancer routes European users to the europe-west1 backend for sub-50ms latency.
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 company's IT admin needs to give a contractor read-only access to production logs without sharing account credentials. Using role-based access control (RBAC) and temporary scoped permissions — not a permanent shared password — is the correct pattern. Questions like this test whether you can apply least-privilege access across cloud identity services.
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: External HTTP(S) Load Balancer — The External HTTP(S) Load Balancer is the correct choice because it is a global, proxy-based Layer 7 load balancer that terminates HTTP/HTTPS traffic at Google's edge points of presence (PoPs) and routes requests to the nearest healthy backend. This provides low-latency access for users worldwide by leveraging Google's global network and anycast IPs, while also offering built-in high availability, SSL offloading, and content-based routing.
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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This PCD 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 PCD exam.
Question Discussion
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