Question

Difficulty: MediumPlanning Compute Engine Resources and Machine Types

An organization is planning its Google Cloud infrastructure for two distinct applications. Application 1 is a high-throughput video transcode batch processing pipeline that processes stateless chunks in parallel and can handle unexpected instance terminations without data loss. Application 2 is a core web service operating continuously 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, with predictable baseline resource requirements. Which TWO machine planning and pricing strategies should you implement to optimize overall compute costs while maintaining performance requirements?

  1. Provision Spot Compute Engine VMs for the stateless batch processing workers in Application 1.Answer
  2. Purchase Committed Use Discounts (CUDs) for the steady-state Standard VMs running Application 2.Answer
  3. C
    Deploy Application 2 on Spot VMs to minimize the baseline operational cost of continuous web services.
  4. D
    Migrate Application 1 batch transcode workers to Cloud Functions to avoid managing Compute Engine virtual machine types.

Answer

Select Spot Compute Engine VMs for the fault-tolerant batch processing workload, and apply Committed Use Discounts (CUDs) to Standard VMs for the continuous 24/7 web application.
The combination of Spot Compute Engine VMs for fault-tolerant batch processing and Committed Use Discounts (CUDs) for continuous 24/7 web services aligns directly with GCP cost-optimization best practices. Spot VMs drastically reduce compute costs for jobs that easily resume on preemption, while CUDs provide predictable price reductions for uninterrupted baseline infrastructure.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze Application 1 requirements (fault-tolerant, stateless, batch processing).
Identify that Spot VMs offer maximum cost savings for workloads capable of handling preemption.
Spot instances offer deep discounts and fit batch jobs that can restart work items if preempted.
2
Analyze Application 2 requirements (continuous 24/7 operation, predictable resource demand).
Select Standard VMs paired with 1-year or 3-year Committed Use Discounts (CUDs).
Continuous baseline capacity receives significant contractual discounts without risk of unexpected termination.
3
Evaluate anti-patterns in remaining alternatives.
Reject using Spot VMs for steady-state web applications and Cloud Functions for heavy batch media encoding.
Spot VMs violate SLA expectations for continuous web servers, while Cloud Functions cannot handle resource-intensive long-running video processing.

Key Concept

Selecting appropriate Compute Engine purchasing models (Spot VMs vs. Committed Use Discounts) based on workload fault-tolerance and baseline usage predictability.
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