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Difficulty: HardEstimating GCP Costs with the Pricing Calculator

A cloud engineer is using the Google Cloud Pricing Calculator to model monthly operational costs for a mission-critical production workload running continuously 24/7 year-round. The architecture requires 20 Compute Engine instances for base application traffic and a 10 TB data layer that will be queried and updated multiple times per day. Which configuration strategy in the Google Cloud Pricing Calculator provides the most accurate and cost-effective estimate for this workload?

  1. Specify 3-year Committed Use Discounts (CUDs) for the 20 Compute Engine instances and select Standard Cloud Storage for the frequently accessed 10 TB data layer.Answer
  2. B
    Combine automatic Sustained Use Discounts (SUDs) with 3-year Committed Use Discounts (CUDs) for the Compute Engine instances, and select Archive Storage to minimize baseline storage costs.
  3. C
    Configure all 20 Compute Engine instances as Spot VM instances to maximize discount percentages, and select Coldline Storage for the active data layer.
  4. D
    Model the application layer using GKE Autopilot pods with Archive Storage for the active data layer, while assuming node management fees will cover data egress and storage access.

Answer

Specify 3-year Committed Use Discounts (CUDs) for the 20 Compute Engine instances and select Standard Cloud Storage for the frequently accessed 10 TB data layer.
The correct strategy specifies 3-year Committed Use Discounts (CUDs) for the continuous 24/7 Compute Engine workload to lock in the maximum discount rate available in the Google Cloud Pricing Calculator. For the data layer accessed multiple times daily, Standard Cloud Storage is required because nearline, coldline, and archive tiers incur expensive data access and retrieval fees that outweigh their lower baseline at-rest storage costs.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Evaluate compute usage pattern and discount options in the Google Cloud Pricing Calculator.
Identify that a continuous 24/7 mission-critical workload operating over long horizons qualifies for Committed Use Discounts (CUDs), which yield higher cost savings than Sustained Use Discounts (SUDs) and cannot be stacked together.
CUDs commit to a specific amount of resource usage for 1 or 3 years, overriding automatic SUDs.
2
Assess storage class access requirements based on workload access frequency.
Determine that data accessed multiple times per day requires Standard Cloud Storage to avoid operational retrieval fees.
Coldline and Archive storage tiers have low at-rest pricing but high data retrieval fees, making them cost-prohibitive for active data.
3
Synthesize compute and storage choices to select the optimal calculator configuration.
Combine 3-year CUDs for VMs with Standard Cloud Storage for active data.
This combination achieves maximum valid compute savings while eliminating unexpected storage retrieval penalties.

Key Concept

Pricing Calculator discount modeling and storage tier access trade-offs
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Estimating GCP Costs with the Pricing Calculator

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