Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer Free Practice Questions — Page 7
Question 61
You are the Operations Lead for an ongoing incident with one of your services. The service usually runs at around 70% capacity. You notice that one node is returning 5xx errors for all requests. There has also been a noticeable increase in support cases from customers. You need to remove the offending node from the load balancer pool so that you can isolate and investigate the node. You want to follow Google-recommended practices to manage the incident and reduce the impact on users. What should you do?
A. 1. Communicate your intent to the incident team. 2. Perform a load analysis to determine if the remaining nodes can handle the increase in traffic offloaded from the removed node, and scale appropriately. 3. When any new nodes report healthy, drain traffic from the unhealthy node, and remove the unhealthy node from service.
B. 1. Communicate your intent to the incident team. 2. Add a new node to the pool, and wait for the new node to report as healthy. 3. When traffic is being served on the new node, drain traffic from the unhealthy node, and remove the old node from service.
C. 1. Drain traffic from the unhealthy node and remove the node from service. 2. Monitor traffic to ensure that the error is resolved and that the other nodes in the pool are handling the traffic appropriately. 3. Scale the pool as necessary to handle the new load. 4. Communicate your actions to the incident team.
D. 1. Drain traffic from the unhealthy node and remove the old node from service. 2. Add a new node to the pool, wait for the new node to report as healthy, and then serve traffic to the new node. 3. Monitor traffic to ensure that the pool is healthy and is handling traffic appropriately. 4. Communicate your actions to the incident team.
Show Answer
Correct Answer: A
Explanation: Google SRE incident practices emphasize communication first, capacity safety, and minimizing user impact. Since the service normally runs at ~70% capacity, removing a node may be safe but must be validated. The correct approach is to first communicate intent, assess whether remaining capacity can handle the load and scale if needed, then drain traffic from the unhealthy node once sufficient healthy capacity exists, and finally remove it from service. Option A follows this order and avoids sudden capacity loss or uncoordinated actions.
Question 62
You are investigating issues in your production application that runs on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE). You determined that the source of the issue is a recently updated container image, although the exact change in code was not identified. The deployment is currently pointing to the latest tag. You need to update your cluster to run a version of the container that functions as intended. What should you do?
A. Create a new tag called stable that points to the previously working container, and change the deployment to point to the new tag.
B. Alter the deployment to point to the sha256 digest of the previously working container.
C. Build a new container from a previous Git tag, and do a rolling update on the deployment to the new container.
D. Apply the latest tag to the previous container image, and do a rolling update on the deployment.
Show Answer
Correct Answer: B
Explanation: The safest and fastest way to recover is to deploy the exact container image version that is known to work. Image tags like `latest` are mutable and may point to different image contents over time, making rollbacks unreliable. By updating the deployment to reference the specific sha256 digest of the previously working image, you ensure Kubernetes pulls and runs that exact, immutable image. This avoids rebuilding images or retagging and guarantees consistency across nodes.
Question 63
You are developing reusable infrastructure as code modules. Each module contains integration tests that launch the module in a test project. You are using GitHub for source control. You need to continuously test your feature branch and ensure that all code is tested before changes are accepted. You need to implement a solution to automate the integration tests. What should you do?
A. Use a Jenkins server for CI/CD pipelines. Periodically run all tests in the feature branch.
B. Ask the pull request reviewers to run the integration tests before approving the code.
C. Use Cloud Build to run the tests. Trigger all tests to run after a pull request is merged.
D. Use Cloud Build to run tests in a specific folder. Trigger Cloud Build for every GitHub pull request.
Show Answer
Correct Answer: D
Explanation: The requirement is to continuously test feature branches and ensure all code is tested before changes are accepted. This implies running integration tests automatically on pull requests, not after merge. Cloud Build integrates with GitHub and can be triggered on every pull request, providing CI feedback before approval. Running tests scoped to the relevant folder/modules keeps the process efficient while still validating the infrastructure modules. Options A and B are manual or periodic and do not guarantee pre-merge testing, and option C runs tests only after merge, which is too late.
Question 64
You are leading a DevOps project for your organization. The DevOps team is responsible for managing the service infrastructure and being on-call for incidents. The Software Development team is responsible for writing, submitting, and reviewing code. Neither team has any published SLOs. You want to design a new joint-ownership model for a service between the DevOps team and the Software Development team. Which responsibilities should be assigned to each team in the new joint-ownership model?
A.
B.
C.
D.
Show Answer
Correct Answer: C
Explanation: In a joint-ownership (DevOps) model, reliability and service health are shared, while core specialties remain distinct. The DevOps team should continue managing service infrastructure and operational tooling. The Software Development team should remain responsible for writing and submitting code. Both teams should jointly define, adopt, and publish SLOs and share accountability during incidents, ensuring collaboration rather than siloed ownership. Option C best reflects this balanced shared-responsibility model.
Question 65
You work for a global organization and are running a monolithic application on Compute Engine. You need to select the machine type for the application to use that optimizes CPU utilization by using the fewest number of steps. You want to use historical system metrics to identify the machine type for the application to use. You want to follow Google-recommended practices. What should you do?
A. Use the Recommender API and apply the suggested recommendations.
B. Create an Agent Policy to automatically install Ops Agent in all VMs.
C. Install the Ops Agent in a fleet of VMs by using the gcloud CLI.
D. Review the Cloud Monitoring dashboard for the VM and choose the machine type with the lowest CPU utilization.
Show Answer
Correct Answer: A
Explanation: Google Cloud Recommender analyzes historical usage metrics (including CPU utilization) and provides machine type recommendations to right-size Compute Engine VMs. Using the Recommender API follows Google-recommended practices and achieves optimization with the fewest manual steps, unlike manually reviewing metrics or just installing agents.
Question 66
Your organization is using Helm to package containerized applications. Your applications reference both public and private charts. Your security team flagged that using a public Helm repository as a dependency is a risk. You want to manage all charts uniformly, with native access control and VPC Service Controls. What should you do?
A. Store public and private charts in OCI format by using Artifact Registry.
B. Store public and private charts by using GitHub Enterprise with Google Workspace as the identity provider.
C. Store public and private charts by using Git repository. Configure Cloud Build to synchronize contents of the repository into a Cloud Storage bucket. Connect Helm to the bucket by using https://[bucket].storage-googleapis.com/[helmchart] as the Helm repository.
D. Configure a Helm chart repository server to run in Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) with Cloud Storage bucket as the storage backend.
Show Answer
Correct Answer: A
Explanation: Artifact Registry natively supports Helm charts in OCI format and integrates with Google Cloud IAM and VPC Service Controls. By mirroring both public and private charts into Artifact Registry, you eliminate reliance on external public repositories while managing all charts uniformly with centralized access control, auditability, and network security. The other options either lack native Helm support with VPC Service Controls or add unnecessary operational complexity.
Question 67
Your application's performance in Google Cloud has degraded since the last release. You suspect that downstream dependencies might be causing some requests to take longer to complete. You need to investigate the issue with your application to determine the cause. What should you do?
A. Configure Error Reporting in your application.
B. Configure Google Cloud Managed Service for Prometheus in your application.
C. Configure Cloud Profiler in your application.
D. Configure Cloud Trace in your application.
Show Answer
Correct Answer: D
Explanation: The problem describes increased request latency and suspicion of slow downstream dependencies. Cloud Trace is designed to analyze end-to-end request latency by tracing requests across services and dependencies, making it ideal for identifying bottlenecks and slow components. Error Reporting focuses on exceptions, Prometheus on metrics collection, and Cloud Profiler on CPU/memory usage rather than request latency across dependencies.
Question 68
Your organization is starting to containerize with Google Cloud. You need a fully managed storage solution for container images and Helm charts. You need to identify a storage solution that has native integration into existing Google Cloud services, including Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE), Cloud Run, VPC Service Controls, and Identity and Access Management (IAM). What should you do?
A. Use Docker to configure a Cloud Storage driver pointed at the bucket owned by your organization.
B. Configure an open source container registry server to run in GKE with a restrictive role-based access control (RBAC) configuration.
C. Configure Artifact Registry as an OCI-based container registry for both Helm charts and container images.
D. Configure Container Registry as an OCI-based container registry for container images.
Show Answer
Correct Answer: C
Explanation: Artifact Registry is Google Cloud’s fully managed artifact storage service that natively supports OCI container images and Helm charts. It integrates directly with GKE, Cloud Run, IAM, and VPC Service Controls, and is the recommended replacement for Container Registry. Other options either require self-management or lack Helm chart support and full native integration.
Question 69
You are monitoring a service that uses n2-standard-2 Compute Engine instances that serve large files. Users have reported that downloads are slow. Your Cloud Monitoring dashboard shows that your VMs are running at peak network throughput. You want to improve the network throughput performance. What should you do?
A. Add additional network interface controllers (NICs) to your VMs.
B. Deploy a Cloud NAT gateway and attach the gateway to the subnet of the VMs.
C. Change the machine type for your VMs to n2-standard-8.
D. Deploy the Ops Agent to export additional monitoring metrics.
Show Answer
Correct Answer: C
Explanation: Compute Engine network egress and ingress throughput are tied to the number of vCPUs on a VM. The n2-standard-2 instances are already at their maximum network throughput, so to increase bandwidth you must increase the vCPU count. Changing the machine type to n2-standard-8 provides more vCPUs and therefore higher network throughput. Adding NICs does not increase bandwidth, Cloud NAT does not improve VM throughput, and installing the Ops Agent only adds monitoring, not performance improvements.
Question 70
You recently migrated an ecommerce application to Google Cloud. You now need to prepare the application for the upcoming peak traffic season. You want to follow Google-recommended practices. What should you do first to prepare for the busy season?
A. Migrate the application to Cloud Run, and use autoscaling.
B. Create a Terraform configuration for the application's underlying infrastructure to quickly deploy to additional regions.
C. Load test the application to profile its performance for scaling.
D. Pre-provision the additional compute power that was used last season, and expect growth.
Show Answer
Correct Answer: C
Explanation: The first Google-recommended step before peak traffic is to understand how the application behaves under load. Load testing identifies performance bottlenecks, validates current architecture, and provides data needed to design effective autoscaling and capacity strategies. Without this baseline, decisions about autoscaling, pre-provisioning, or architectural changes are speculative.
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