The answer is Google Kubernetes Engine with Regional Persistent Disk. This combination is correct because Regional Persistent Disk synchronously replicates data across multiple zones within a region, allowing a GKE pod to fail over automatically to another zone without data loss or manual intervention. For the Google Professional Cloud Developer exam, this scenario tests your understanding of how to achieve zone-level resilience for stateful workloads, often appearing as a distractor against zonal persistent disks or managed instance groups, which lack cross-zone replication. A common trap is choosing a zonal disk for simplicity, but the key requirement here is automatic failover across zones, which only Regional Persistent Disk provides. Remember: if the question says “high availability across zones,” think “regional disk” — the word “regional” is your clue that data lives in multiple zones, enabling GKE to reschedule pods instantly.
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 company is migrating a stateful application to Google Cloud. They need high availability with automatic failover across zones within a region. Which compute option should they choose?
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Google Kubernetes Engine with Regional Persistent Disk
Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) with Regional Persistent Disk is the correct choice because it provides synchronous replication of data across multiple zones within a region, enabling automatic failover for stateful applications. When a pod or node fails in one zone, the Regional Persistent Disk can be immediately attached to a pod in another zone, ensuring high availability without data loss. This meets the requirement for stateful workloads that need zone-level resilience.
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.
✗
App Engine Standard Environment
Why it's wrong here
App Engine Standard is stateless and not suitable for stateful applications requiring failover.
✗
Cloud Run
Why it's wrong here
Cloud Run is stateless and does not provide automatic failover for stateful applications.
✓
Google Kubernetes Engine with Regional Persistent Disk
Why this is correct
Regional Persistent Disk provides synchronous replication across zones, enabling automatic failover for stateful workloads on GKE.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Compute Engine with standard persistent disk
Why it's wrong here
Standard persistent disk is zonal and does not replicate across zones.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
Cisco often tests the misconception that any managed service (like Cloud Run or App Engine) inherently provides high availability for stateful workloads, but candidates must remember that stateful applications require persistent, zone-redundant storage, which only GKE with Regional Persistent Disk offers among these options.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Regional Persistent Disks use synchronous replication at the block level across two zones in the same region, ensuring that writes are acknowledged only after being committed in both zones. In GKE, you can leverage StatefulSets with volume claim templates that reference a Regional Persistent Disk, allowing the pod to be rescheduled in the surviving zone during a zonal outage. This design avoids the complexity of manual replication or third-party tools, but requires careful planning for pod anti-affinity and readiness probes to ensure seamless failover.
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.
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: Google Kubernetes Engine with Regional Persistent Disk — Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) with Regional Persistent Disk is the correct choice because it provides synchronous replication of data across multiple zones within a region, enabling automatic failover for stateful applications. When a pod or node fails in one zone, the Regional Persistent Disk can be immediately attached to a pod in another zone, ensuring high availability without data loss. This meets the requirement for stateful workloads that need zone-level resilience.
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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