Associate Cloud Engineer Free Practice Questions — Page 5
Question 40
Your preview application, deployed on a single-zone Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) cluster in us-central1, has gained popularity. You are now ready to make the application generally available. You need to deploy the application to production while ensuring high availability and resilience. You also want to follow Google-recommended practices. What should you do?
A. Use the gcloud container clusters create command with the options --enable-multi-networking and --enable-autoscaling to create an autoscaling zonal cluster and deploy the application to it.
B. Use the gcloud container clusters create-auto command to create an autopilot cluster and deploy the application to it.
C. Use the gcloud container clusters update command with the option --region us-central1 to update the cluster and deploy the application to it.
D. Use the gcloud container clusters update command with the option --node-locations us-central1-a,us-central1-b to update the cluster and deploy the application to the nodes.
Show Answer
Correct Answer: B
Explanation: To make the application production-ready with high availability and resilience, Google recommends using a regional GKE cluster with a highly available control plane and nodes spread across multiple zones. The gcloud container clusters create-auto command creates an Autopilot cluster, which is regional by default and automatically manages node placement, scaling, and best-practice configurations. This aligns with Google-recommended practices and removes the risks associated with zonal clusters or manually adding zones to an existing single-zone cluster.
Question 41
You have a VM instance running in a VPC with single-stack subnets. You need to ensure that the VM instance has a fixed IP address so that other services hosted in the same VPC can communicate with the VM. You want to follow Google-recommended practices while minimizing cost. What should you do?
A. Promote the existing IP address of the VM to become a static external IP address.
B. Promote the existing IP address of the VM to become a static internal IP address.
C. Reserve a new static external IPv6 address and assign the new IP address to the VM.
D. Reserve a new static external IP address and assign the new IP address to the VM.
Show Answer
Correct Answer: B
Explanation: The VM only needs a fixed IP for communication with other services inside the same VPC. Google-recommended practice is to use internal IPs for intra‑VPC traffic, avoiding unnecessary external exposure and cost. Promoting the existing internal IP to a static internal IP ensures the address remains fixed without incurring charges associated with external IP addresses. External or IPv6 addresses are unnecessary for this requirement.
Question 42
You need to deploy a third-party software application onto a single Compute Engine VM instance. The application requires the highest speed read and write disk access for the internal database. You need to ensure the instance will recover on failure. What should you do?
A. Create an instance template. Set the disk type to be an SSD Persistent Disk. Launch the instance template as part of a stateful managed instance group.
B. Create an instance template. Set the disk type to be an SSD Persistent Disk. Launch the instance template as part of a stateless managed instance group.
C. Create an instance template. Set the disk type to be Hyperdisk Extreme. Launch the instance template as part of a stateful managed instance group.
D. Create an instance template. Set the disk type to be Hyperdisk Extreme. Launch the instance template as part of a stateless managed instance group.
Show Answer
Correct Answer: C
Explanation: The requirement is the highest possible read/write performance for a database, which is best met by Hyperdisk Extreme due to its dedicated, very high IOPS, throughput, and low latency. To ensure the VM recovers on failure without losing its disk data, the instance should be part of a stateful managed instance group so the attached disk is preserved and reattached during recovery. This makes option C the correct choice.
Question 43
You are deploying an application on Google Cloud that requires a relational database for storage. To satisfy your company’s security policies, your application must connect to your database through an encrypted and authenticated connection that requires minimal management and integrates with Identity and Access Management (IAM). What should you do?
A. Deploy a Cloud SQL database with the SSL mode set to encrypted only, configure SSL/TLS client certificates, and configure a database user and password.
B. Deploy a Cloud SQL database with the SSL mode set to encrypted only, configure SSL/TLS client certificates, and configure IAM database authentication.
C. Deploy a Cloud SQL database and configure IAM database authentication. Access the database through the Cloud SQL Auth Proxy.
D. Deploy a Cloud SQL database and configure a database user and password. Access the database through the Cloud SQL Auth Proxy.
Show Answer
Correct Answer: C
Explanation: Cloud SQL Auth Proxy automatically provides encrypted (TLS) connections and uses IAM for authentication, eliminating the need to manage SSL certificates or database passwords. This meets the requirements for strong security, minimal management, and tight IAM integration better than manual SSL/TLS or database credential approaches.
Question 44
Your team is building a website that handles votes from a large user population. The incoming votes will arrive at various rates. You want to optimize the storage and processing of the votes. What should you do?
A. Save the incoming votes to Firestore. Use Cloud Scheduler to trigger a Cloud Functions instance to periodically process the votes.
B. Use a dedicated instance to process the incoming votes. Send the votes directly to this instance.
C. Save the incoming votes to a JSON file on Cloud Storage. Process the votes in a batch at the end of the day.
D. Save the incoming votes to Pub/Sub. Use the Pub/Sub topic to trigger a Cloud Functions instance to process the votes.
Show Answer
Correct Answer: D
Explanation: Using Pub/Sub decouples vote ingestion from processing and can handle highly variable traffic at scale. Pub/Sub buffers bursts of incoming votes, and triggering Cloud Functions allows automatic, serverless scaling and near–real-time processing without managing infrastructure. This optimizes both reliability and performance for large, unpredictable vote volumes.
Question 45
You want to deploy a new containerized application into Google Cloud by using a Kubernetes manifest. You want to have full control over the Kubernetes deployment, and at the same time, you want to minimize configuring infrastructure. What should you do?
A. Deploy the application on GKE Autopilot.
B. Deploy the application on Cloud Run.
C. Deploy the application on GKE Standard.
D. Deploy the application on Cloud Functions.
Show Answer
Correct Answer: A
Explanation: The requirements are to deploy using Kubernetes manifests, retain control over Kubernetes workloads, and minimize infrastructure configuration. Cloud Run and Cloud Functions do not provide full Kubernetes control. GKE Standard offers maximum control but requires managing cluster and node infrastructure. GKE Autopilot still allows full control over Kubernetes objects (pods, deployments, services, manifests) while Google manages the underlying infrastructure automatically, best matching both requirements.
Question 46
You need to deploy a single stateless web application with a web interface and multiple endpoints. For security reasons, the web application must be reachable from an internal IP address from your company's private VPC and on-premises network. You also need to update the web application multiple times per day with minimal effort and want to manage a minimal amount of cloud infrastructure. What should you do?
A. Deploy the web application on Google Kubernetes Engine standard edition with an internal ingress.
B. Deploy the web application on Cloud Run with Private Google Access configured.
C. Deploy the web application on Cloud Run with Private Service Connect configured.
D. Deploy the web application to GKE Autopilot with Private Google Access configured.
Show Answer
Correct Answer: C
Explanation: The requirements favor a fully managed, low‑ops service that can be updated frequently and is only reachable via private networking from both a VPC and on‑premises. Cloud Run satisfies the stateless, frequent‑deployment, minimal‑infrastructure requirement. To make Cloud Run privately accessible from a VPC and on‑premises networks, Private Service Connect is required, as it creates private endpoints in the VPC that can be reached over VPN or Interconnect. Private Google Access only allows private resources to reach Google APIs and does not expose Cloud Run to on‑premises networks. GKE options require more infrastructure management than necessary.
Question 47
Your web application is hosted on Cloud Run and needs to query a Cloud SQL database. Every morning during a traffic spike, you notice API quota errors in Cloud SQL logs. The project has already reached the maximum API quota. You want to make a configuration change to mitigate the issue. What should you do?
A. Modify the minimum number of Cloud Run instances.
B. Use traffic splitting.
C. Modify the maximum number of Cloud Run instances.
D. Set a minimum concurrent requests environment variable for the application.
Show Answer
Correct Answer: C
Explanation: The API quota errors occur during traffic spikes because Cloud Run rapidly scales out, creating many instances that each establish connections or make API calls to Cloud SQL. Since the project is already at the maximum Cloud SQL API quota, the correct mitigation is to limit how far Cloud Run can scale. By modifying the maximum number of Cloud Run instances, you cap the number of simultaneous database connections and API calls, preventing quota exhaustion. Setting minimum instances only reduces cold starts and does not stop aggressive scale-out during spikes, while traffic splitting and concurrency settings do not directly address Cloud SQL API quota limits.
Question 48
Your team has developed a stateless application which requires it to be run directly on virtual machines. The application is expected to receive a fluctuating amount of traffic and needs to scale automatically. You need to deploy the application. What should you do?
A. Deploy the application on a managed instance group and configure autoscaling.
B. Deploy the application on a Kubernetes Engine cluster and configure node pool autoscaling.
C. Deploy the application on Cloud Functions and configure the maximum number instances.
D. Deploy the application on Cloud Run and configure autoscaling.
Show Answer
Correct Answer: A
Explanation: The application must run directly on virtual machines and is stateless with variable traffic. Managed Instance Groups are specifically designed for this scenario: they run identical VM instances and support autoscaling based on load, along with health checks and load balancing. Kubernetes Engine, Cloud Run, and Cloud Functions abstract away VM management and do not meet the requirement to run directly on VMs.
Question 49
Your company uses BigQuery to store and analyze data. Upon submitting your query in BigQuery, the query fails with a quotaExceeded error. You need to diagnose the issue causing the error. What should you do? (Choose two.)
A. Use BigQuery BI Engine to analyze the issue.
B. Use the INFORMATION_SCHEMA views to analyze the underlying issue.
C. Configure Cloud Trace to analyze the issue.
D. Search errors in Cloud Audit Logs to analyze the issue.
E. View errors in Cloud Monitoring to analyze the issue.
Show Answer
Correct Answer: B, D
Explanation: A BigQuery quotaExceeded error requires diagnosing which quota was hit and by which jobs. INFORMATION_SCHEMA views (such as JOBS_BY_PROJECT or JOBS_BY_USER) expose metadata about queries, resource usage, and errors, helping identify quota-consuming jobs. Cloud Audit Logs record API calls and errors, including quotaExceeded events, providing detailed context (timestamp, service, operation) to pinpoint the root cause. Other options are not intended for diagnosing BigQuery quota errors.
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