This PCD practice question tests your understanding of deploying applications. 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.
A developer needs to deploy a Cloud Run service from a container image in Artifact Registry. What IAM role should be granted to the Cloud Run service account?
roles/storage.objectViewer
Why wrong: For GCS, not AR.
roles/cloudbuild.builds.builder
Why wrong: For Cloud Build, not runtime.
roles/artifactregistry.reader
Required to read container images from Artifact Registry.
roles/run.invoker
Why wrong: To invoke the service.
Answer choices
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
roles/artifactregistry.reader
The Cloud Run service account needs permission to read the container image from Artifact Registry during deployment. The `roles/artifactregistry.reader` role grants the `artifactregistry.repositories.downloadArtifacts` permission, which is required to pull the image. Without this role, the deployment fails with an access denied error.
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.
roles/storage.objectViewer
Why it's wrong here
For GCS, not AR.
roles/cloudbuild.builds.builder
Why it's wrong here
For Cloud Build, not runtime.
roles/artifactregistry.reader
Why this is correct
Required to read container images from Artifact Registry.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
roles/run.invoker
Why it's wrong here
To invoke the service.
Common exam traps
Cisco often tests the distinction between roles that grant access to the container image (Artifact Registry reader) versus roles that grant access to the running service (Cloud Run invoker), causing candidates to confuse deployment-time permissions with runtime permissions.
Detailed technical explanation
Under the hood, when Cloud Run deploys a revision, the Cloud Run control plane uses the service account's credentials to authenticate to Artifact Registry via the `gcr.io` or `pkg.dev` endpoint. The `artifactregistry.repositories.downloadArtifacts` permission is checked against the repository's IAM policy. In a real-world scenario, if you use a custom service account for Cloud Run, you must grant this role on the Artifact Registry repository (or at the project level) before the deployment can succeed.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
A media company stores terabytes of video archives that are accessed once a year for audit purposes. Moving these objects to a cold storage tier (Azure Archive, S3 Glacier, or Google Nearline) costs a fraction of hot storage. Questions like this test whether you understand storage tiers, access frequency tradeoffs, and retrieval latency requirements.
What to study next
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FAQ
Deploying applications — This question tests Deploying applications — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
The correct answer is: roles/artifactregistry.reader — The Cloud Run service account needs permission to read the container image from Artifact Registry during deployment. The `roles/artifactregistry.reader` role grants the `artifactregistry.repositories.downloadArtifacts` permission, which is required to pull the image. Without this role, the deployment fails with an access denied error.
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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