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Difficulty: MediumPlanning Database Options and Persistent Disk Types

A financial services firm is migrating a custom relational PostgreSQL database to a Compute Engine virtual machine. The workload requires steady, reliable IOPS and low latency for transactional processing, but the engineering team wants a cost-effective block storage option that performs better than standard HDDs without paying the premium cost of high-performance SSDs. Additionally, the data must persist independently of the VM lifecycle and support automated snapshot backups. Which storage option best satisfies these requirements?

  1. Balanced Persistent Disk (pd-balanced)Answer
  2. B
    Local SSD
  3. C
    Cloud Bigtable
  4. D
    Cloud Storage Coldline bucket mounted as a file system

Answer

Balanced Persistent Disk (pd-balanced) is the recommended GCP block storage solution for general enterprise workloads needing SSD performance at a lower cost point while retaining persistence and snapshot support.
Balanced Persistent Disk (pd-balanced) provides backed SSD storage optimized for enterprise applications that need a balance of performance and cost. It supports snapshots, persistent attach/detach capabilities, and reliable IOPS required by relational database engines like PostgreSQL on Compute Engine.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze storage persistence requirements
Database storage must persist when the Compute Engine VM stops or restarts and must support snapshots.
Ephemeral options like Local SSD lose data on instance stop events and cannot be backed up directly via standard Compute Engine snapshots.
2
Evaluate workload operational type (Block Storage vs Object/NoSQL)
The requirement calls for block storage for a VM hosting PostgreSQL.
Managed NoSQL services (Cloud Bigtable) or object storage tiers (Cloud Storage) cannot serve as attached block storage for relational SQL engines.
3
Compare Persistent Disk cost/performance trade-offs
Balanced Persistent Disk (pd-balanced) provides a cost-effective middle tier between Standard Persistent Disk (pd-standard HDD) and Performance SSD (pd-ssd).
pd-balanced offers solid SSD performance and IOPS appropriate for standard database instances at a reduced price point compared to pd-ssd.

Key Concept

Selecting persistent block storage types for Compute Engine database workloads based on IOPS performance, persistence, and cost constraints.
Estimated Time:1m 30s
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Topics

Planning Database Options and Persistent Disk Types

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