PCDE Plan and manage database infrastructure Practice Question
This PCDE practice question tests your understanding of plan and manage database infrastructure. 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 uses Memorystore for Redis as a cache. They need to survive a zone failure. Which configuration 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
✓
Standard tier with replication
Standard tier with replication (Option D) provides a primary-replica pair in the same region but across two zones, ensuring automatic failover if one zone fails. This meets the requirement to survive a zone failure while maintaining low-latency access within a single region.
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.
✗
Cluster tier with multiple shards
Why it's wrong here
Cluster tier provides sharding but does not guarantee zone failure resilience without replication.
✗
Basic tier with a single node
Why it's wrong here
Basic tier has no replication and cannot survive zone failures.
✗
Standard tier cross-region
Why it's wrong here
Memorystore does not support cross-region replication; it is within a region only.
✓
Standard tier with replication
Why this is correct
Standard tier provisions a primary and replica in different zones, providing zone failover.
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 confuse 'cross-region' with 'cross-zone' replication, or assume that sharding alone (Cluster tier) provides zone redundancy, when in fact Memorystore for Redis does not support cross-region replication and requires explicit replication (Standard tier) for zone-level failover.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Memorystore for Redis Standard tier uses synchronous replication between the primary and replica nodes, with automatic failover triggered by a health check mechanism that detects zone-level outages. Under the hood, the replica is placed in a different zone by default when you enable replication, and failover is handled by the managed service without requiring manual intervention or Redis Sentinel configuration. In a real-world scenario, if the primary zone fails, the replica is promoted within seconds, and the client endpoint remains unchanged, ensuring minimal disruption.
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 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
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.
Plan and manage database infrastructure — This question tests Plan and manage database infrastructure — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Standard tier with replication — Standard tier with replication (Option D) provides a primary-replica pair in the same region but across two zones, ensuring automatic failover if one zone fails. This meets the requirement to survive a zone failure while maintaining low-latency access within a single region.
What should I do if I get this PCDE 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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Question Discussion
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