This PCDOE practice question tests your understanding of implementing service monitoring strategies. 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.
Which TWO metrics should be monitored to detect a potential memory leak in a Compute Engine VM?
CPU utilization
Why wrong: High CPU could be due to many causes, not necessarily a memory leak.
Process count
A memory leak may cause the application to spawn more processes.
Memory usage (percentage)
Gradual increase in memory usage indicates a leak.
Disk read IOPS
Why wrong: Disk I/O is not directly related to memory leaks.
Network bytes sent
Why wrong: Network traffic is not indicative of memory leaks.
Answer choices
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
Process count
Option B is correct because a memory leak causes processes to consume increasing amounts of memory without releasing it, leading to a growing process count as new instances of the leaking process are spawned or existing processes remain active. Monitoring the process count helps detect abnormal growth that correlates with memory exhaustion. Option C is correct because memory usage percentage directly reflects how much of the VM's available RAM is consumed; a steady upward trend without a corresponding increase in workload indicates a leak.
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.
CPU utilization
Why it's wrong here
High CPU could be due to many causes, not necessarily a memory leak.
Process count
Why this is correct
A memory leak may cause the application to spawn more processes.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Memory usage (percentage)
Why this is correct
Gradual increase in memory usage indicates a leak.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Disk read IOPS
Why it's wrong here
Disk I/O is not directly related to memory leaks.
Network bytes sent
Why it's wrong here
Network traffic is not indicative of memory leaks.
Common exam traps
Google Cloud often tests the misconception that CPU utilization is a primary indicator of memory leaks, but in reality, a leak can silently consume memory without spiking CPU until the system is critically low on memory.
Detailed technical explanation
A memory leak occurs when allocated memory (via malloc, new, or similar) is never freed, causing the process's resident set size (RSS) to grow indefinitely. In Linux, the /proc/meminfo and /proc/<pid>/smaps files provide granular memory statistics, and tools like top or ps can track process count and memory usage over time. Real-world scenarios include a web server leaking memory per request, where the process count remains stable but memory usage climbs, or a forking daemon that fails to reap children, increasing process count.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
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
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FAQ
Implementing service monitoring strategies — This question tests Implementing service monitoring strategies — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
The correct answer is: Process count — Option B is correct because a memory leak causes processes to consume increasing amounts of memory without releasing it, leading to a growing process count as new instances of the leaking process are spawned or existing processes remain active. Monitoring the process count helps detect abnormal growth that correlates with memory exhaustion. Option C is correct because memory usage percentage directly reflects how much of the VM's available RAM is consumed; a steady upward trend without a corresponding increase in workload indicates a leak.
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 30, 2026
This PCDOE 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 PCDOE exam.
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