PCDE Plan and manage database infrastructure Practice Question
This PCDE practice question tests your understanding of plan and manage database infrastructure. This is a configuration task: choose the command set that satisfies every stated requirement. Small differences — like 'secret' vs 'password' or 'transport input ssh' vs 'all' — change whether the answer is correct. 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 financial firm uses Cloud Spanner with a single-region configuration. They must meet regulatory requirements for disaster recovery across continents. They need to recover within 1 hour RTO and RPO of 5 minutes. Current workload: 50k writes/sec. What should they do?
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Use multi-region configuration with synchronous replication across two continents.
Option C is correct because Cloud Spanner's multi-region configuration uses synchronous replication across continents, providing strong consistency and automatic failover. This meets the 1-hour RTO and 5-minute RPO requirements for disaster recovery, as synchronous replication ensures data is durable across regions with minimal lag, and Spanner handles failover transparently without manual intervention.
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 cross-region backups with 5-minute retention.
Why it's wrong here
Backups can be scheduled at most every 4 hours, so cannot meet 5-min RPO.
✗
Use Cloud SQL for MySQL with cross-region replicas.
Why it's wrong here
Cloud SQL cannot handle 50k writes per second.
✓
Use multi-region configuration with synchronous replication across two continents.
Why this is correct
Synchronous replication ensures near-zero RPO and automatic failover meets RTO.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Use export to Cloud Storage every 5 minutes.
Why it's wrong here
Exports are not designed for frequent intervals and are slow.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates often confuse backup-based recovery (like exports or snapshots) with synchronous replication, failing to realize that only synchronous replication can meet strict RPOs like 5 minutes across continents without data loss.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Cloud Spanner's multi-region configuration uses Paxos-based synchronous replication across regions, ensuring that writes are committed only after a majority of replicas across continents acknowledge them. This provides strong consistency and automatic failover, with typical replication latency under 10 ms within a continent and up to 100 ms across continents, making it suitable for 50k writes/sec. The RPO is effectively zero for committed writes, and RTO is under 1 hour due to automatic failover without data loss.
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: Use multi-region configuration with synchronous replication across two continents. — Option C is correct because Cloud Spanner's multi-region configuration uses synchronous replication across continents, providing strong consistency and automatic failover. This meets the 1-hour RTO and 5-minute RPO requirements for disaster recovery, as synchronous replication ensures data is durable across regions with minimal lag, and Spanner handles failover transparently without manual intervention.
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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