Professional Cloud Architect Free Practice Questions — Page 6
Question 42
You are deploying a critical application with a stateless, containerized frontend on Cloud Run and a Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL backend. The application experiences unpredictable traffic spikes, and the business requires the ability to immediately roll back a failed deployment to the last known good state. You need to apply a deployment strategy that aligns with Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) principles for both the application code and the database schema updates, while meeting the business's requirements. What should you do?
A. Package the database schema migration script within the container to be executed on every container startup before the application process begins.
B. Configure the CI/CD pipeline to use the :latest container tag for deployments, with database schema changes applied manually as needed.
C. Separate CI/CD pipelines for database schema migrations from application deployments. When deploying a new Cloud Run revision, use gradual traffic split.
D. Use a single CI/CD pipeline that first applies database schema changes and then deploys the new Cloud Run revision.
Show Answer
Correct Answer: C
Explanation: This approach aligns with SRE principles of safe deployments and fast rollback. Cloud Run supports immutable revisions and gradual traffic splitting, allowing immediate rollback by shifting traffic back to the last known good revision during unpredictable spikes. Separating database schema migrations from application deployments avoids coupling schema changes to container startups and allows migrations to be carefully versioned, tested, and coordinated (e.g., backward-compatible changes) before or independently of code rollout. Options A, B, and D increase blast radius or reduce rollback safety, especially for production systems.
Question 43
Your product team is building a critical, customer-facing application on Google Cloud. The development team wants to use Spanner for their database to take advantage of its horizontal scalability and low operational overhead However, the FinOps team is concerned about the direct monthly cost of Spanner and proposed using a self-managed PostgreSQL database on Compute Engine VMs instead. You need to resolve this conflict and ensure the project moves forward with an architecturally sound database choice that balances technical requirements with financial constraints. What should you do?
A. Provide the development team with a reference architecture for deploying a highly available PostgreSQL cluster on a regional managed instance group (MIG).
B. Suggest using Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL as a compromise to get a managed service at a lower cost than Spanner.
C. Develop a total cost of ownership (TCO) analysis that includes operational overhead, and present it in a workshop to facilitate a decision.
D. Cite the reliability and performance optimization pillars of the Google Cloud Well-Architected Framework to formally justify the use of Spanner.
Show Answer
Correct Answer: C
Explanation: The conflict is both technical and financial. A total cost of ownership (TCO) analysis compares not just raw service pricing, but also operational overhead, staffing, reliability risks, scalability limits, and downtime costs. Presenting this data collaboratively with FinOps enables an informed, business-aligned decision rather than a purely architectural or cost-based argument. This is the architecturally correct way to balance requirements and move the project forward.
Question 44
You are designing the architecture for a global social media site on Google Cloud. The site serves dynamic API content, static assets such as CSS. JS. images, and user-uploaded videos for streaming. You need to minimize latency for all content types for users worldwide. What should you do? (Choose two.)
A. Use an external Application Load Balancer to serve your application APIs.
B. Use Cloud CDN to serve static assets of your application.
C. Use Media CDN to serve static assets of your application
D. Use Memorystore to serve your web application.
E. Use a multi-region Cloud Storage bucket to serve your entire web application.
Show Answer
Correct Answer: A, B
Explanation: An external Application Load Balancer provides a global anycast entry point and routes dynamic API traffic to the closest healthy backend, minimizing latency worldwide. Cloud CDN caches and serves static assets such as CSS, JavaScript, and images from edge locations close to users, reducing latency and origin load. Other options do not appropriately handle global dynamic traffic or are not intended for general static web assets.
Question 45
Your organization has a significant amount of log data stored in Cloud Logging. The data engineering team is accustomed to using SQL for analysis and wants the ability to create insightful dashboards for visualizing log trends and patterns. You want to follow the recommendations of the Google Cloud Well-Architected Framework to provide a solution for the data engineering team. What should you do?
A. Create a log sink, and export the data to BigQuery using Pub/Sub. Run queries and visualize the data with Cloud Monitoring dashboards.
B. Enable log analytics and run queries in Cloud Monitoring. Visualize the data using Vertex AI workbench.
C. Enable log analytics and run queries in the linked log dataset in BigQuery. Visualize the data with Looker Studio dashboards.
D. Create a log sink, and export the data to a storage bucket. Create an external table in BigQuery for the data in the bucket. Run queries and visualize the data with Cloud Monitoring dashboards.
Show Answer
Correct Answer: C
Explanation: Enabling Log Analytics on a log bucket provides a linked BigQuery dataset, allowing the data engineering team to analyze logs using standard SQL without exporting or duplicating data. This aligns with the Google Cloud Well-Architected Framework by using managed, integrated services. Looker Studio has native BigQuery connectivity, making it the recommended option for building dashboards to visualize log trends and patterns.
Question 46
You are creating a migration plan to move your organization’s infrastructure from on-premises to Google Cloud. You want to understand and manage costs effectively after the migration is complete. Which strategies should you include in the migration plan? (Choose two.)
A. Enable Backup and DR Service.
B. Configure labels and tags for the resources provisioned in Google Cloud.
C. Create a Cloud Scheduler job to export billing data to Cloud SQL.
D. Create service alerts using Cloud Monitoring.
E. Adopt infrastructure as code (IaC) for the cloud resources.
Show Answer
Correct Answer: B, E
Explanation: Configuring labels and tags enables accurate cost allocation, reporting, and chargeback across teams and projects after migration. Adopting infrastructure as code enforces standardized, repeatable deployments that reduce sprawl, prevent orphaned resources, and help control and predict costs. The other options are not primarily cost-management strategies.
Question 47
Your company has a Google Cloud project that uses BigOuery for data warehousing. The VPN tunnel between the on-premises environment and Google Cloud is configured with Cloud VPN. Your security team wants to avoid data exfiltration by malicious insiders, compromised code, and accidental oversharing. What should you do?
A. Configure Private Service Connect.
B. Configure VPC Service Controls and configure Private Google Access for on-promises hosts.
C. Create a service account, grant the BigQuery JobUser role and Storage Object Viewer role to the service account, and remove all other Identity and Access Management (IAM) access from the project.
D. Configure Private Google Access.
Show Answer
Correct Answer: B
Explanation: VPC Service Controls create a security perimeter around BigQuery to prevent data exfiltration caused by compromised credentials, malicious insiders, or accidental sharing. Enabling Private Google Access for on‑premises hosts allows access to Google APIs over the private network instead of the public internet, reducing exposure. Together, these controls directly address the requirement to prevent data exfiltration while maintaining secure access.
Question 48
You have a Compute Engine application that you want to autoscale when total memory usage exceeds 80%. You have installed the Cloud Monitoring agent and configured the autoscaling policy as follows:
You observe that the application does not scale under high load. You want to resolve this. What should you do?
A. Change the Target type to DELTA_PER_MINUTE.
B. Change the Metric identifier to agent.googleapis.com/memory/bytes_used.
C. Change the filter to metric.label.state = ‘used’.
D. Change the filter to metric.label.state = ‘free’ and the Target utilization to 20.
Show Answer
Correct Answer: C
Explanation: The autoscaling policy is not triggering because the metric filter is logically invalid. The filter uses multiple AND conditions for metric.label.state (used, buffered, cached, slab), but each memory metric time series has only one state label at a time. As a result, no data matches the filter and autoscaling never occurs. Changing the filter to metric.label.state = 'used' ensures the autoscaler evaluates a valid memory usage time series and can scale when usage exceeds 80%.
Question 49
Your company has decided to make a major revision of their API in order to create better experiences for their developers. They need to keep the old version of the API available and deployable, while allowing new customers and testers to try out the new API. They want to keep the same SSL and DNS records in place to serve both APIs.
What should they do?
A. Configure a new load balancer for the new version of the API
B. Reconfigure old clients to use a new endpoint for the new API
C. Have the old API forward traffic to the new API based on the path
D. Use separate backend pools for each API path behind the load balancer
Show Answer
Correct Answer: D
Explanation: They need to serve both old and new API versions over the same DNS name and SSL certificate while routing requests appropriately. Using a single load balancer with path-based routing to separate backend pools allows /v1 and /v2 (or similar) to coexist cleanly without changing endpoints or certificates, and keeps both versions independently deployable.
Question 50
You are working at a financial institution that stores mortgage loan approval documents on Cloud Storage. Any change to these approval documents must be uploaded as a separate approval file. You need to ensure that these documents cannot be deleted or overwritten for the next 5 years. What should you do?
A. Create a retention policy on the bucket for the duration of 5 years. Create a lock on the retention policy.
B. Create a retention policy organizational constraint constraints/storage.retentionPolicySeconds at the organization level. Set the duration to 5 years.
C. Use a customer-managed key for the encryption of the bucket. Rotate the key after 5 years.
D. Create a retention policy organizational constraint constraints/storage.retentionPolicySeconds at the project level. Set the duration to 5 years.
Show Answer
Correct Answer: A
Explanation: A bucket-level retention policy in Cloud Storage enforces WORM (write-once, read-many) behavior so that objects cannot be deleted or overwritten until the retention period expires. Locking the retention policy is essential because it prevents anyone, including administrators, from reducing or removing the retention period. Organizational constraints only enforce minimums but do not provide immutable protection for existing objects, and encryption key rotation does not prevent deletion or overwrite.
Question 51
Your company wants to migrate their 10-TB on-premises database export into Cloud Storage. You want to minimize the time it takes to complete this activity and the overall cost. The bandwidth between the on-premises environment and Google Cloud is 1 Gbps. You want to follow Google-recommended practices. What should you do?
A. Develop a Dataflow job to read data directly from the database and write it into Cloud Storage.
B. Use the Data Transfer appliance to perform an offline migration.
C. Use a commercial partner ETL solution to extract the data from the on-premises database and upload it into Cloud Storage.
D. Upload the data with gcloud storage cp.
Show Answer
Correct Answer: D
Explanation: At 1 Gbps, transferring 10 TB over the network takes roughly 22–24 hours under ideal conditions, which is well under a week. Google recommends the Transfer Appliance when network transfer would take more than a week or bandwidth is severely constrained. Using `gcloud storage cp` (with parallelism and resumable uploads) is the fastest and lowest-cost option in this scenario. The 5 TB object limit is not an issue because database exports are typically split into multiple files, and even if not, they can be split before upload.
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