- A
Use a single Load Balancer with multiple backends.
Why wrong: While a load balancer is useful, the single load balancer itself could be a single point of failure. Using multiple load balancers or regional load balancing is better for high availability.
- B
Deploy resources across multiple zones.
Distributing instances across zones protects against zone-level failures.
- C
Use zonal managed instance groups with 100% target utilization.
Why wrong: Target utilization at 100% leaves no headroom for failover; when a zone fails, the system may not have capacity to absorb traffic.
- D
Store data in regional persistent disks.
Regional persistent disks replicate data synchronously across zones, providing data durability across zonal failures.
- E
Implement health checks and autohealing.
Health checks allow load balancers to route traffic only to healthy instances, and autohealing replaces unhealthy VMs automatically.
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. 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 team is designing a cloud-native application that must be highly available and resilient to zone failures. Which three practices should they follow? (Choose three.)
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
Deploy resources across multiple zones.
Option B is correct because deploying resources across multiple zones ensures that the application remains available even if an entire zone fails. In Google Cloud, zones are independent failure domains, and distributing workloads across them is a fundamental pattern for achieving high availability and resilience to zone-level outages.
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 single Load Balancer with multiple backends.
Why it's wrong here
While a load balancer is useful, the single load balancer itself could be a single point of failure. Using multiple load balancers or regional load balancing is better for high availability.
- ✓
Deploy resources across multiple zones.
Why this is correct
Distributing instances across zones protects against zone-level failures.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
- ✗
Use zonal managed instance groups with 100% target utilization.
Why it's wrong here
Target utilization at 100% leaves no headroom for failover; when a zone fails, the system may not have capacity to absorb traffic.
- ✓
Store data in regional persistent disks.
Why this is correct
Regional persistent disks replicate data synchronously across zones, providing data durability across zonal failures.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
- ✓
Implement health checks and autohealing.
Why this is correct
Health checks allow load balancers to route traffic only to healthy instances, and autohealing replaces unhealthy VMs automatically.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates may think a single load balancer is sufficient for high availability, but in cloud-native design, the load balancer itself is a managed service that is inherently resilient, while the real risk is having backends in only one zone or no spare capacity to absorb failures.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Google Cloud Load Balancing is a global, anycast-based service that distributes traffic across backends in multiple zones and regions, so a single load balancer is not a single point of failure. Zonal managed instance groups should be configured with a lower target utilization (e.g., 60-80%) to allow headroom for autohealing and zone failure recovery, and they are typically combined with multi-zone deployment to ensure capacity across zones.
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
An e-commerce site experiences heavy traffic on Black Friday and near-zero traffic during off-peak weeks. Rather than provisioning permanent large VMs, the team uses auto-scaling groups that add capacity automatically under load and reduce it overnight. Questions like this test whether you understand elasticity, availability zones, and cloud compute scaling patterns.
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.
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Designing highly scalable, available, and reliable cloud-native applications — study guide chapter
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FAQ
Questions learners often ask
What does this PCD question test?
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: Deploy resources across multiple zones. — Option B is correct because deploying resources across multiple zones ensures that the application remains available even if an entire zone fails. In Google Cloud, zones are independent failure domains, and distributing workloads across them is a fundamental pattern for achieving high availability and resilience to zone-level outages.
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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Last reviewed: Jun 25, 2026
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.
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