Google Associate Cloud Engineer Exam  Dumps and Practice Test Questions Set 10 Q 181-200

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Question 181

You need to deploy a containerized application that requires automatic scaling, traffic splitting, and service-to-service authentication. Which Google Cloud solution is most appropriate?

A) Compute Engine with managed instance groups
B) App Engine Standard Environment
C) Kubernetes Engine (GKE) with Istio
D) Cloud Run

Answer C) Kubernetes Engine (GKE) with Istio

Explanation

A) Compute Engine with managed instance groups provides basic scaling at the VM level, adjusting the number of instances based on metrics such as CPU utilization. While this allows horizontal scaling, deploying a containerized application on virtual machines requires manual orchestration. Service-to-service communication, traffic splitting, and secure authentication must be configured and managed separately, which introduces significant operational overhead. Rolling updates and fault tolerance are manual, making Compute Engine unsuitable for modern containerized applications requiring automation and advanced service management.

B) App Engine Standard Environment offers automatic scaling and abstracts infrastructure management. It is well-suited for simple web applications but lacks full support for containerized microservices requiring service-to-service authentication and advanced traffic routing. Although App Engine handles scaling and runtime management, it does not natively provide the capabilities of a service mesh for secure inter-service communication, making it less suitable for complex microservices deployments.

C) Kubernetes Engine (GKE) with Istio provides a fully managed container orchestration platform with integrated service mesh capabilities. GKE enables automatic scaling, rolling updates, self-healing, and resource optimization. Istio adds service-to-service authentication, secure communication with mutual TLS, traffic splitting, fault injection, retries, and detailed observability. This combination allows developers to focus on application logic while the platform manages operational concerns such as scaling, routing, and security. Monitoring, logging, and policy enforcement are built-in, providing full visibility and operational control. For modern containerized applications, GKE with Istio is the most appropriate solution to meet requirements for automatic scaling, traffic splitting, and secure service-to-service communication.

D) Cloud Run is a serverless container platform that provides automatic scaling and simplifies deployment. While Cloud Run is suitable for stateless workloads and abstracts infrastructure management, it lacks built-in service mesh capabilities for secure inter-service communication and advanced traffic management. Implementing multi-service communication in Cloud Run would require additional orchestration tools, increasing operational complexity.

The correct solution is Kubernetes Engine (GKE) with Istio because it offers enterprise-grade orchestration, secure service communication, traffic management, observability, and reduced operational overhead, making it ideal for modern containerized microservices.

Question 182

You need to migrate a production PostgreSQL database to Cloud SQL while minimizing downtime and maintaining transactional consistency. Which approach is most appropriate?

A) Export to SQL dump and import
B) Database Migration Service (DMS) with continuous replication
C) Manual schema creation and ETL migration
D) Cloud Storage Transfer Service

Answer B) Database Migration Service (DMS) with continuous replication

Explanation

A) Exporting a PostgreSQL database to a SQL dump and importing it into Cloud SQL is feasible for small, non-critical workloads. However, this method introduces significant downtime in production, as changes made after the export are not captured. Large databases may require hours or days for migration, making it impractical for high-volume, transactional systems. Additionally, data consistency and transactional integrity cannot be guaranteed, making this approach unsuitable for production environments.

B) Database Migration Service (DMS) with continuous replication is designed for enterprise-grade migrations with minimal downtime. DMS automates the initial schema creation and data load, followed by continuous replication of ongoing changes from the source database to the Cloud SQL target. This ensures the target remains synchronized with the source database, preserving transactional consistency. Cutover can be performed with minimal disruption, and the service provides monitoring, validation, and rollback options to mitigate risk. This solution ensures reliable, low-downtime migration for production PostgreSQL databases while maintaining data integrity.

C) Manual schema creation and ETL migration is operationally complex and error-prone. Implementing continuous replication manually requires custom scripts and monitoring, which increases the risk of data loss, inconsistency, and extended downtime. This approach is not suitable for production systems requiring transactional consistency.

D) Cloud Storage Transfer Service is designed for transferring object storage and does not support database migrations. Attempting to use it for PostgreSQL migration would require additional orchestration and scripting, introducing complexity and risk.

The correct solution is Database Migration Service with continuous replication because it ensures near-zero downtime, maintains transactional consistency, provides automated monitoring, and reduces operational complexity for production PostgreSQL migrations.

Question 183

You need to provide temporary, secure access for a partner to download files from a Cloud Storage bucket. Which method is most appropriate?

A) Share personal credentials
B) Create a service account with long-lived keys
C) Use signed URLs
D) Grant Owner permissions

Answer C) Use signed URLs

Explanation

A) Sharing personal credentials is highly insecure and violates the principle of least privilege. It exposes all project resources, complicates auditing, monitoring, and revocation. Personal credentials should never be shared with external parties, as this introduces significant operational and security risks.

B) Creating a service account with long-lived keys provides programmatic access but is unsuitable for temporary access. Managing key rotation, secure storage, and revocation adds operational complexity and increases risk, especially for short-term access.

C) Signed URLs allow temporary, secure access to specific objects in Cloud Storage without creating IAM accounts. Permissions and expiration times can be configured to restrict access to downloads. Signed URLs enforce least-privilege access, are auditable, and automatically expire, preventing unauthorized use. This method is widely used for secure temporary access for partners and contractors while protecting other project resources.

D) Granting Owner permissions is excessive and insecure. Owners have full control over all project resources, which is unnecessary for downloading files. This introduces operational and security risks, including potential accidental or malicious changes.

The correct solution is signed URLs because they provide temporary, secure, auditable access with minimal operational overhead. Partners can download files safely without exposing other resources.

Question 184

You need to monitor Compute Engine instances for CPU, memory, and disk usage and alert your operations team when thresholds are exceeded. Which service is most appropriate?

A) Cloud Logging
B) Cloud Monitoring with alerting policies
C) Cloud Trace
D) Cloud Storage notifications

Answer B) Cloud Monitoring with alerting policies

Explanation

A) Cloud Logging collects logs for auditing and troubleshooting but does not provide infrastructure-level metrics or threshold-based alerts. Using logs alone requires additional processing pipelines and introduces latency, making it inefficient for proactive monitoring of system performance.

B) Cloud Monitoring collects real-time metrics from Compute Engine instances, including CPU utilization, memory usage, and disk I/O. Alerting policies allow thresholds to be defined, with notifications sent via email, Slack, PagerDuty, or other channels. Dashboards visualize trends and provide operational insights. Integration with IAM ensures secure, centralized observability. Automated alerts enable teams to respond proactively, reducing downtime and improving operational efficiency. Cloud Monitoring provides scalable, enterprise-grade observability and fault detection for infrastructure workloads.

C) Cloud Trace is designed for monitoring application latency and distributed request performance. It does not provide infrastructure metrics, making it unsuitable for system-level monitoring and alerting.

D) Cloud Storage notifications alert users to changes in storage objects and are unrelated to Compute Engine metrics. They cannot trigger alerts based on CPU, memory, or disk usage.

The correct solution is Cloud Monitoring with alerting policies because it provides real-time metrics, dashboards, automated alerts, and operational insights, enabling proactive management and improved reliability.

Question 185

You need to design a disaster recovery solution for a mission-critical application that must remain available during a regional outage. Which architecture is most appropriate?

A) Single-region deployment with automated backups
B) Multi-region deployment with active-active instances
C) Single-region deployment with snapshots
D) Deploy all resources in a private VPC

Answer B) Multi-region deployment with active-active instances

Explanation

A) Single-region deployment with automated backups protects against accidental deletion or corruption but does not provide resilience to regional outages. During a regional outage, downtime occurs until resources are restored in another region. This design does not meet enterprise RTO or RPO requirements for mission-critical workloads.

B) Multi-region deployment with active-active instances ensures continuous availability across multiple regions. Traffic is routed via a global load balancer, and healthy instances in unaffected regions handle requests automatically during a regional outage. This architecture provides automated failover, high availability, fault tolerance, and scalability. Active-active deployment ensures near-zero downtime and operational continuity. Health checks, global routing, and automated failover enhance reliability, resilience, and business continuity. This design is ideal for mission-critical applications requiring enterprise-grade disaster recovery.

C) Single-region deployment with snapshots allows recovery, but restoration in another region introduces downtime. Snapshots alone do not provide automated failover or high availability, making this approach insufficient for mission-critical workloads.

D) Deploying resources in a private VPC enhances security but does not provide cross-region redundancy. A regional failure would render resources unavailable, making this approach unsuitable for disaster recovery.

The correct solution is multi-region deployment with active-active instances because it provides redundancy, automated failover, near-zero downtime, and operational continuity. This aligns with cloud-native disaster recovery best practices and ensures business continuity for mission-critical workloads.

Question 186

You need to deploy a highly available web application that can handle traffic spikes globally and provide low latency to users. Which architecture is most appropriate?

A) Single Compute Engine instance with autoscaling
B) App Engine Standard Environment deployed in a single region
C) Global HTTP(S) Load Balancer with multi-region backend instances
D) Cloud Run deployed in a single region

Answer C) Global HTTP(S) Load Balancer with multi-region backend instances

Explanation

A) A single Compute Engine instance with autoscaling provides horizontal scaling within a single region. While autoscaling helps handle increased local demand, it cannot handle traffic from global users efficiently. Latency increases for users far from the deployment region, and a regional outage would render the application unavailable. Manual load balancing, traffic routing, and failover would be needed, which increases operational complexity and reduces reliability. Therefore, this approach does not satisfy global availability and low-latency requirements.

B) App Engine Standard Environment abstracts infrastructure management and provides automatic scaling. While it can handle variable traffic, deployment in a single region limits performance for global users. Latency from distant users may increase, and the system does not provide automatic multi-region failover. To achieve global distribution, additional configuration and replication are needed, adding operational overhead. This makes a single-region App Engine deployment less suitable for enterprise-grade global applications.

C) Global HTTP(S) Load Balancer with multi-region backend instances is the recommended approach for globally distributed web applications. The load balancer routes users to the nearest healthy backend, reducing latency and improving performance. Multi-region deployment ensures resilience during regional outages, with automatic rerouting to healthy regions. Features like SSL termination, health checks, Cloud CDN integration, and auto-scaling enhance security, performance, and operational reliability. This architecture ensures enterprise-grade global availability, fault tolerance, low latency, and minimal operational overhead, making it ideal for applications serving users worldwide.

D) Cloud Run deployed in a single region is a serverless container solution that automatically scales with demand. While operational overhead is low, deployment in a single region cannot provide global redundancy or low latency to distant users. Regional outages would make the application unavailable. Multi-region deployment with Cloud Run is possible but requires additional orchestration for routing and failover, whereas a Global Load Balancer handles these automatically.

The correct solution is Global HTTP(S) Load Balancer with multi-region backend instances because it provides automated scaling, high availability, fault tolerance, low latency, and operational efficiency for global web applications.

Question 187

You need to migrate a production MySQL database to Cloud SQL with minimal downtime while ensuring transactional consistency. Which method is most appropriate?

A) Export to SQL dump and import
B) Database Migration Service (DMS) with continuous replication
C) Manual schema creation and ETL migration
D) Cloud Storage Transfer Service

Answer B) Database Migration Service (DMS) with continuous replication

Explanation

A) Exporting a MySQL database to a SQL dump and importing it into Cloud SQL can work for small, non-critical databases but introduces significant downtime. Any changes made after the export are lost, making it unsuitable for high-traffic production databases. Large datasets may take hours or days to migrate, and data integrity cannot be guaranteed. Therefore, this approach is insufficient for enterprise-level production workloads.

B) Database Migration Service (DMS) with continuous replication is designed for enterprise-grade migrations with minimal downtime. DMS automates initial schema creation and data transfer while continuously replicating changes from the source database to Cloud SQL. This ensures the target database remains synchronized with the source, maintaining transactional consistency. Cutover can be performed with minimal disruption. DMS also provides monitoring, validation, and rollback capabilities, reducing operational risk. This method is ideal for production MySQL databases that require near-zero downtime and reliable transactional consistency during migration.

C) Manual schema creation and ETL migration is operationally complex and prone to errors. Continuous replication must be implemented manually, increasing the risk of data inconsistency and downtime. This method is not suitable for production databases requiring high availability.

D) Cloud Storage Transfer Service is designed for transferring object storage and cannot perform database migrations. Attempting to use it for MySQL migration would require extensive custom scripting and additional infrastructure, introducing inefficiency and risk.

The correct solution is Database Migration Service with continuous replication because it ensures minimal downtime, maintains transactional consistency, automates operational tasks, and provides enterprise-grade monitoring and validation.

Question 188

You need to provide temporary, secure access for a partner to upload files to a Cloud Storage bucket. Which approach is most appropriate?

A) Share personal credentials
B) Create a service account with long-lived keys
C) Use signed URLs
D) Grant Owner permissions

Answer C) Use signed URLs

Explanation

A) Sharing personal credentials is highly insecure and violates the principle of least privilege. Personal credentials expose all project resources, complicate auditing, revocation, and monitoring. Sharing credentials is never appropriate for temporary external access.

B) Creating a service account with long-lived keys allows programmatic access but is unsuitable for temporary tasks. Managing key rotation and revocation introduces operational complexity and security risk.

C) Signed URLs provide temporary, secure access to specific objects in Cloud Storage without creating IAM accounts. Permissions and expiration times can be configured to allow uploads for a defined period. Signed URLs enforce least-privilege access, are auditable, and automatically expire to prevent unauthorized access. This approach is widely adopted in enterprise environments for temporary external collaboration, ensuring partners can upload files safely without risking other project resources.

D) Granting Owner permissions is excessive and insecure. Owners have full control over all project resources, which is unnecessary for file uploads. This introduces high operational and security risks, including accidental or malicious modifications.

The correct solution is signed URLs because they provide secure, temporary, auditable access with minimal operational overhead. This ensures partners can complete their tasks without compromising other resources.

 

Question 189

You need to monitor Compute Engine instances for CPU, memory, and disk usage and alert your operations team when thresholds are exceeded. Which service is most appropriate?

A) Cloud Logging
B) Cloud Monitoring with alerting policies
C) Cloud Trace
D) Cloud Storage notifications

Answer B) Cloud Monitoring with alerting policies

Explanation

A) Cloud Logging captures logs for auditing and troubleshooting but does not provide real-time metrics or threshold-based alerts. Using logs alone for monitoring requires additional processing pipelines and introduces latency, making proactive monitoring difficult.

B) Cloud Monitoring provides real-time metrics from Compute Engine instances, including CPU utilization, memory usage, and disk I/O. Alerting policies allow thresholds to be defined, with notifications sent via email, Slack, PagerDuty, or other channels. Dashboards provide visualizations of trends, enabling operational insight, capacity planning, and proactive incident response. Integration with IAM ensures secure, centralized observability. Automated alerts allow teams to respond quickly, reducing downtime and improving operational efficiency. Cloud Monitoring provides scalable, enterprise-grade observability and fault detection for infrastructure workloads.

C) Cloud Trace is designed for application latency monitoring and distributed request performance. It does not provide infrastructure metrics such as CPU, memory, or disk usage, making it unsuitable for system-level monitoring.

D) Cloud Storage notifications alert users to changes in storage objects and are unrelated to Compute Engine metrics. They cannot provide threshold-based alerts or operational insights for compute resources.

The correct solution is Cloud Monitoring with alerting policies because it provides real-time metrics, dashboards, automated alerts, and operational insights, enabling proactive management and improved reliability.

Question 190

You need to design a disaster recovery solution for a mission-critical application that must remain available during a regional outage. Which architecture is most appropriate?

A) Single-region deployment with automated backups
B) Multi-region deployment with active-active instances
C) Single-region deployment with snapshots
D) Deploy all resources in a private VPC

Answer B) Multi-region deployment with active-active instances

Explanation

A) Single-region deployment with automated backups protects against accidental deletion or corruption but cannot withstand regional outages. Downtime occurs until resources are restored in another region. This approach does not meet enterprise RTO or RPO requirements for mission-critical workloads.

B) Multi-region deployment with active-active instances ensures continuous availability across multiple regions. Traffic is routed via a global load balancer, and healthy instances in unaffected regions automatically handle requests during a regional outage. This architecture provides automated failover, high availability, fault tolerance, and scalability. Active-active deployment ensures near-zero downtime and operational continuity. Features like health checks, global routing, and automated failover enhance reliability and resilience. This design is ideal for mission-critical applications requiring enterprise-grade disaster recovery.

C) Single-region deployment with snapshots allows recovery, but restoring in another region introduces downtime. Snapshots alone do not provide automated failover or high availability, making it insufficient for mission-critical workloads.

D) Deploying resources in a private VPC enhances security but does not provide cross-region redundancy. A regional failure would render resources unavailable, making this approach unsuitable for disaster recovery.

The correct solution is multi-region deployment with active-active instances because it ensures redundancy, automated failover, near-zero downtime, and operational continuity. This aligns with cloud-native disaster recovery best practices and ensures business continuity for mission-critical workloads.

Question 191

You need to deploy a microservices application that requires secure inter-service communication, automatic scaling, and traffic routing. Which Google Cloud solution is most appropriate?

A) Compute Engine with managed instance groups
B) App Engine Standard Environment
C) Kubernetes Engine (GKE) with Istio
D) Cloud Run

Answer C) Kubernetes Engine (GKE) with Istio

Explanation

A) Compute Engine with managed instance groups provides horizontal scaling at the VM level, but it does not natively support container orchestration or service-to-service communication. While autoscaling allows the system to handle varying loads, configuring inter-service communication, traffic routing, and security is manual. This increases operational complexity, risk, and effort for maintaining a modern microservices architecture. Rolling updates and fault tolerance must also be manually implemented, making this solution less suitable for production-grade containerized microservices requiring advanced management.

B) App Engine Standard Environment provides automatic scaling and abstracts underlying infrastructure. While suitable for monolithic web applications or simple services, it does not natively support containerized microservices with secure inter-service communication. Traffic splitting is supported but limited compared to a full service mesh, and implementing secure authentication between microservices is operationally complex. For large-scale microservices deployments, App Engine Standard Environment lacks the necessary control and flexibility.

C) Kubernetes Engine (GKE) with Istio is designed for modern containerized microservices. GKE provides automated scaling, self-healing, rolling updates, and resource management. Istio adds a service mesh layer that handles secure inter-service communication using mutual TLS, traffic routing, retries, fault injection, and observability. Logging, metrics, and policy enforcement are integrated, providing comprehensive operational control. GKE with Istio allows teams to focus on application logic while infrastructure and communication concerns are handled automatically. This solution meets enterprise requirements for microservices, security, traffic management, and scalability.

D) Cloud Run provides serverless container deployment with automatic scaling and simplified operational management. While suitable for stateless workloads, Cloud Run lacks integrated service mesh capabilities for secure inter-service communication and advanced traffic management. For complex microservices requiring mutual TLS and granular traffic control, additional orchestration is needed, increasing complexity and operational risk.

The correct solution is Kubernetes Engine (GKE) with Istio because it provides container orchestration, secure service-to-service communication, traffic routing, observability, and automatic scaling for enterprise-grade microservices.

Question 192

You need to migrate a high-volume PostgreSQL database to Cloud SQL with minimal downtime while maintaining transactional consistency. Which approach is most appropriate?

A) Export to SQL dump and import
B) Database Migration Service (DMS) with continuous replication
C) Manual schema creation and ETL migration
D) Cloud Storage Transfer Service

Answer B) Database Migration Service (DMS) with continuous replication

Explanation

A) Exporting a PostgreSQL database to a SQL dump and importing it into Cloud SQL can work for small, non-critical workloads. However, this method introduces downtime during export and import, and any transactions occurring after the export are lost. For large databases, the process can take hours or days, increasing downtime and risk. Data integrity and transactional consistency cannot be guaranteed, making this approach unsuitable for production workloads.

B) Database Migration Service (DMS) with continuous replication is designed for enterprise-grade migrations. DMS automates schema migration and initial data transfer, followed by continuous replication of ongoing changes from the source database to Cloud SQL. This ensures the target remains synchronized with the source, maintaining transactional consistency. Cutover can occur with minimal disruption, reducing downtime. DMS provides monitoring, validation, and rollback capabilities to mitigate risk. This method is ideal for production PostgreSQL databases requiring near-zero downtime and consistent transactions.

C) Manual schema creation and ETL migration is operationally complex and error-prone. Implementing continuous replication manually increases the risk of downtime, data inconsistency, and lost transactions. This approach is not suitable for production systems requiring high availability.

D) Cloud Storage Transfer Service is designed for object storage and cannot perform database migrations. Using it for PostgreSQL would require additional infrastructure and scripting, introducing operational complexity and risk.

The correct solution is Database Migration Service with continuous replication because it provides automated migration, transactional consistency, minimal downtime, and enterprise-grade monitoring and validation.

Question 193

You need to provide temporary, secure access for a contractor to download files from a Cloud Storage bucket. Which method is most appropriate?

A) Share personal credentials
B) Create a service account with long-lived keys
C) Use signed URLs
D) Grant Owner permissions

Answer C) Use signed URLs

Explanation

A) Sharing personal credentials is highly insecure and violates the principle of least privilege. It exposes all project resources, complicates auditing, monitoring, and revocation. Sharing credentials is never appropriate for temporary external access.

B) Creating a service account with long-lived keys provides programmatic access but is not suitable for temporary access. Key rotation, secure storage, and revocation add operational overhead and risk.

C) Signed URLs provide temporary, secure access to specific objects in Cloud Storage without requiring IAM accounts. Permissions and expiration times can be configured to allow downloads while enforcing least-privilege access. Signed URLs automatically expire, preventing unauthorized access, and are auditable. This method is widely used for external contractors or partners requiring temporary access without exposing other project resources.

D) Granting Owner permissions is excessive and insecure. Owners have full control over all project resources, which is unnecessary for downloading files and introduces operational and security risks, including accidental or malicious changes.

The correct solution is signed URLs because they provide temporary, secure, auditable access with minimal operational overhead, allowing contractors to download files safely without exposing other resources.

Question 194

You need to monitor Compute Engine instances for CPU, memory, and disk usage and alert your operations team when thresholds are exceeded. Which service is most appropriate?

A) Cloud Logging
B) Cloud Monitoring with alerting policies
C) Cloud Trace
D) Cloud Storage notifications

Answer B) Cloud Monitoring with alerting policies

Explanation

A) Cloud Logging collects logs for auditing and troubleshooting but does not provide threshold-based alerts for infrastructure metrics. Using logs alone would require additional processing pipelines and introduce latency, making proactive monitoring difficult.

B) Cloud Monitoring collects real-time metrics from Compute Engine instances, including CPU utilization, memory usage, and disk I/O. Alerting policies allow thresholds to be defined, with notifications sent via email, Slack, PagerDuty, or other channels. Dashboards provide visualizations of trends and operational insights, enabling proactive incident response, capacity planning, and performance optimization. IAM integration ensures secure, centralized observability. Automated alerts allow teams to respond proactively, reducing downtime and improving operational efficiency. Cloud Monitoring provides scalable, enterprise-grade monitoring and fault detection for infrastructure workloads.

C) Cloud Trace is designed for application latency monitoring and distributed request performance. It does not provide infrastructure-level metrics, making it unsuitable for system monitoring and alerting.

D) Cloud Storage notifications alert users to object changes and are unrelated to Compute Engine metrics. They cannot provide threshold-based alerts for compute resources.

The correct solution is Cloud Monitoring with alerting policies because it provides real-time metrics, dashboards, automated alerts, and operational insights, enabling proactive management and improved reliability.

Question 195

You need to design a disaster recovery solution for a mission-critical application that must remain available during a regional outage. Which architecture is most appropriate?

A) Single-region deployment with automated backups
B) Multi-region deployment with active-active instances
C) Single-region deployment with snapshots
D) Deploy all resources in a private VPC

Answer B) Multi-region deployment with active-active instances

Explanation

A) Single-region deployment with automated backups protects against accidental deletion or corruption but does not provide resilience to regional outages. During a regional outage, downtime occurs until resources are restored in another region. This design fails to meet enterprise RTO or RPO requirements for mission-critical workloads.

B) Multi-region deployment with active-active instances ensures continuous availability across multiple regions. Traffic is routed via a global load balancer, and healthy instances in other regions handle requests automatically during a regional outage. This architecture provides automated failover, high availability, fault tolerance, and scalability. Active-active deployment ensures near-zero downtime and operational continuity. Health checks, global routing, and automated failover enhance reliability and resilience. This approach is ideal for mission-critical applications requiring enterprise-grade disaster recovery.

C) Single-region deployment with snapshots allows recovery, but restoration in another region introduces downtime. Snapshots alone do not provide automated failover or high availability, making this approach insufficient for mission-critical workloads.

D) Deploying resources in a private VPC enhances security but does not provide cross-region redundancy. A regional failure would render resources unavailable, making this approach unsuitable for disaster recovery.

The correct solution is multi-region deployment with active-active instances because it provides redundancy, automated failover, near-zero downtime, and operational continuity. This aligns with cloud-native disaster recovery best practices and ensures business continuity for mission-critical workloads.

Question 196

You need to deploy a containerized application that requires secure service-to-service communication, traffic routing, and automatic scaling. Which Google Cloud solution is most appropriate?

A) Compute Engine with managed instance groups
B) App Engine Standard Environment
C) Kubernetes Engine (GKE) with Istio
D) Cloud Run

Answer C) Kubernetes Engine (GKE) with Istio

Explanation

A) Compute Engine with managed instance groups allows horizontal scaling at the VM level, but it does not natively support container orchestration, traffic routing, or secure inter-service communication. While autoscaling can adjust the number of instances based on resource usage, deploying a microservices architecture requires manual configuration of networking, security, and routing between services. Rolling updates, fault tolerance, and secure communication between services must also be managed manually, which increases operational complexity and risk.

B) App Engine Standard Environment abstracts infrastructure management and provides automatic scaling, but it is primarily designed for web applications or simple services. It lacks the flexibility for containerized microservices and does not provide integrated service mesh capabilities. Secure inter-service communication, advanced traffic routing, and fine-grained policy enforcement require custom implementation, making it less suitable for complex microservices deployments.

C) Kubernetes Engine (GKE) with Istio provides a fully managed container orchestration platform with an integrated service mesh. GKE automates scaling, rolling updates, and resource management, while Istio provides secure inter-service communication with mutual TLS, traffic routing, retries, fault injection, and observability. Logging, metrics, and policy enforcement are built-in, reducing operational overhead. This combination enables teams to deploy and manage containerized microservices securely and efficiently, meeting enterprise requirements for scaling, routing, and communication.

D) Cloud Run offers serverless container deployment with automatic scaling, but it does not provide built-in service mesh features for secure inter-service communication and advanced traffic routing. Stateless workloads can benefit from Cloud Run, but for complex microservices requiring mutual TLS and traffic splitting, additional orchestration is needed, increasing operational complexity.

The correct solution is Kubernetes Engine (GKE) with Istio because it provides secure service-to-service communication, traffic routing, automatic scaling, observability, and enterprise-grade management for modern containerized microservices.

Question 197

You need to migrate a production MySQL database to Cloud SQL with minimal downtime while maintaining transactional consistency. Which method is most appropriate?

A) Export to SQL dump and import
B) Database Migration Service (DMS) with continuous replication
C) Manual schema creation and ETL migration
D) Cloud Storage Transfer Service

Answer B) Database Migration Service (DMS) with continuous replication

Explanation

A) Exporting a MySQL database to a SQL dump and importing it into Cloud SQL is suitable for small, non-critical workloads. However, this approach introduces downtime, as any changes after the export will not be replicated. Large databases require hours or days to export and import, increasing downtime and operational risk. Additionally, transactional consistency cannot be guaranteed, making this approach unsuitable for production workloads.

B) Database Migration Service (DMS) with continuous replication is designed for enterprise-grade migrations. DMS automates initial schema creation and data transfer while continuously replicating ongoing changes from the source database to Cloud SQL. This ensures that the target remains synchronized with the source, preserving transactional consistency. Cutover can occur with minimal disruption, reducing downtime. DMS provides monitoring, validation, and rollback capabilities, mitigating risk. This method is ideal for production MySQL databases requiring minimal downtime and reliable transactional consistency.

C) Manual schema creation and ETL migration is operationally complex and prone to errors. Continuous replication would need to be implemented manually, increasing the risk of downtime, lost transactions, and data inconsistencies. This approach is not suitable for production workloads.

D) Cloud Storage Transfer Service is intended for transferring object storage and cannot handle database migrations. Using it for MySQL migration would require additional scripting and infrastructure, introducing complexity and risk.

The correct solution is Database Migration Service with continuous replication because it ensures near-zero downtime, maintains transactional consistency, automates operational tasks, and provides enterprise-grade monitoring and validation.

Question 198

You need to provide temporary, secure access for a partner to download files from a Cloud Storage bucket. Which approach is most appropriate?

A) Share personal credentials
B) Create a service account with long-lived keys
C) Use signed URLs
D) Grant Owner permissions

Answer C) Use signed URLs

Explanation

A) Sharing personal credentials is highly insecure and violates the principle of least privilege. It exposes all project resources and complicates auditing, monitoring, and revocation. Sharing credentials with external parties is never appropriate and introduces operational and security risks.

B) Creating a service account with long-lived keys provides programmatic access, but this approach is unsuitable for temporary access. Managing key rotation, secure storage, and revocation adds operational complexity and security risk.

C) Signed URLs provide temporary, secure access to specific objects in Cloud Storage without requiring IAM accounts. Permissions and expiration times can be configured to allow downloads while enforcing least-privilege access. Signed URLs automatically expire, preventing unauthorized use, and are auditable. This method is widely used for contractors and partners needing temporary access to resources without exposing other project assets.

D) Granting Owner permissions is excessive and insecure. Owners have full control over all project resources, which is unnecessary for downloading files. This creates operational and security risks, including accidental or malicious modifications.

The correct solution is signed URLs because they provide secure, temporary, auditable access with minimal operational overhead, allowing partners to download files safely without risking other project resources.

Question 199

You need to monitor Compute Engine instances for CPU, memory, and disk usage and alert your operations team when thresholds are exceeded. Which service is most appropriate?

A) Cloud Logging
B) Cloud Monitoring with alerting policies
C) Cloud Trace
D) Cloud Storage notifications

Answer B) Cloud Monitoring with alerting policies

Explanation

A) Cloud Logging collects logs for auditing and troubleshooting but does not provide threshold-based alerts for infrastructure metrics. Using logs alone requires additional processing pipelines and introduces latency, making proactive monitoring difficult.

B) Cloud Monitoring provides real-time metrics from Compute Engine instances, including CPU utilization, memory usage, and disk I/O. Alerting policies allow thresholds to be defined, with notifications sent via email, Slack, PagerDuty, or other channels. Dashboards provide visualization for trends, enabling operational insight, capacity planning, and proactive incident response. IAM integration ensures secure, centralized observability. Automated alerts allow teams to respond proactively, reducing downtime and improving operational efficiency. Cloud Monitoring provides scalable, enterprise-grade monitoring and fault detection for infrastructure workloads.

C) Cloud Trace is designed for monitoring application latency and distributed request performance. It does not provide infrastructure-level metrics, making it unsuitable for system-level monitoring and alerting.

D) Cloud Storage notifications alert users to object changes and are unrelated to Compute Engine metrics. They cannot provide threshold-based alerts for compute resources.

The correct solution is Cloud Monitoring with alerting policies because it provides real-time metrics, dashboards, automated alerts, and operational insights, enabling proactive management and improved reliability.

Question 200

You need to design a disaster recovery solution for a mission-critical application that must remain available during a regional outage. Which architecture is most appropriate?

A) Single-region deployment with automated backups
B) Multi-region deployment with active-active instances
C) Single-region deployment with snapshots
D) Deploy all resources in a private VPC

Answer B) Multi-region deployment with active-active instances

Explanation

A) Single-region deployment with automated backups protects against accidental deletion or corruption but does not provide resilience to regional outages. During a regional failure, downtime occurs until resources are restored in another region. This design fails to meet enterprise RTO or RPO requirements for mission-critical workloads.

B) Multi-region deployment with active-active instances ensures continuous availability across multiple regions. Traffic is routed via a global load balancer, and healthy instances in other regions automatically handle requests during a regional outage. This architecture provides automated failover, high availability, fault tolerance, and scalability. Active-active deployment ensures near-zero downtime and operational continuity. Health checks, global routing, and automated failover enhance reliability, resilience, and business continuity. This design is ideal for mission-critical applications requiring enterprise-grade disaster recovery.

C) Single-region deployment with snapshots allows recovery, but restoration in another region introduces downtime. Snapshots alone do not provide automated failover or high availability, making this approach insufficient for mission-critical workloads.

D) Deploying resources in a private VPC enhances security but does not provide cross-region redundancy. A regional failure would render resources unavailable, making this approach unsuitable for disaster recovery.

The correct solution is multi-region deployment with active-active instances because it provides redundancy, automated failover, near-zero downtime, and operational continuity. This aligns with cloud-native disaster recovery best practices and ensures business continuity for mission-critical workloads.