This PCD practice question tests your understanding of deploying 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.
Your Cloud Run service experiences high latency during traffic spikes. You need to reduce p95 latency without over-provisioning. Which action should you take?
Set max-instances to a low number to ensure consistent resources.
Why wrong: May cause request queuing.
Reduce the max-concurrency per container to 1.
Why wrong: Increases instances but adds cost and may not reduce latency.
Disable CPU throttling to always allocate CPU.
Why wrong: Increases cost without addressing cold start.
Set min-instances to at least 5 for consistent baseline capacity.
Eliminates cold start latency for baseline traffic.
Answer choices
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
Set min-instances to at least 5 for consistent baseline capacity.
Setting min-instances to at least 5 ensures that a baseline number of container instances are always warm and ready to handle incoming requests. This eliminates cold starts and reduces latency during traffic spikes because new requests can be immediately served by pre-warmed instances, rather than waiting for new containers to spin up. This approach directly reduces p95 latency without over-provisioning, as you only pay for the baseline instances when they are idle.
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.
Set max-instances to a low number to ensure consistent resources.
Why it's wrong here
May cause request queuing.
Reduce the max-concurrency per container to 1.
Why it's wrong here
Increases instances but adds cost and may not reduce latency.
Disable CPU throttling to always allocate CPU.
Why it's wrong here
Increases cost without addressing cold start.
Set min-instances to at least 5 for consistent baseline capacity.
Why this is correct
Eliminates cold start latency for baseline traffic.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Common exam traps
Cisco often tests the misconception that reducing concurrency or capping instances improves latency, when in fact the correct approach is to pre-warm instances using min-instances to avoid cold starts during traffic spikes.
Detailed technical explanation
Cloud Run's min-instances feature keeps a specified number of container instances always resident, preventing cold starts that can add 1-2 seconds of latency. Under the hood, Cloud Run uses a request-based autoscaler that scales instances based on concurrency; with min-instances set, the scaler maintains a floor of active instances, ensuring that even during sudden traffic bursts, requests are routed to warm containers without waiting for new instances to be provisioned. In a real-world scenario, an e-commerce site with flash sales would benefit from min-instances to handle the initial spike without latency degradation.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
A cloud solutions architect for a retail company is evaluating services for a new workload. The correct answer here reflects best practice for the specific scenario described — not a general cloud recommendation. Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option. Cloud exam questions reward reading the constraint carefully: the same technology can be right or wrong depending on the use case.
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: Set min-instances to at least 5 for consistent baseline capacity. — Setting min-instances to at least 5 ensures that a baseline number of container instances are always warm and ready to handle incoming requests. This eliminates cold starts and reduces latency during traffic spikes because new requests can be immediately served by pre-warmed instances, rather than waiting for new containers to spin up. This approach directly reduces p95 latency without over-provisioning, as you only pay for the baseline instances when they are idle.
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
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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