Question

Difficulty: HardSelecting and Designing Storage and Database Resources

A financial technology company is modernizing a regional banking compliance and audit application currently running on an on-premises PostgreSQL database. The workload operates entirely within a single Google Cloud region (us-central1) and requires strict ACID compliance, relational joins, automated cross-zone high availability (HA) with zero data loss failover, and point-in-time recovery. Total database storage is projected to reach 4 TB over the next three years, with moderate transaction throughput. The chief architecture office requires a solution that minimizes operational management overhead and unnecessary infrastructure costs while meeting all technical availability requirements. Which storage architecture should the lead Cloud Architect recommend?

  1. Deploy Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL with a regional High Availability (HA) configuration across two zones, utilizing automatic failover and automated point-in-time backups.Answer
  2. B
    Provision a Cloud Spanner multi-region instance cluster with regional database splitting to manage the relational workload.
  3. C
    Deploy Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL configured with Customer-Supplied Encryption Keys (CSEK) stored in an external key vault to handle disk encryption.
  4. D
    Deploy a single-zone Cloud SQL instance with public IP access, relying exclusively on IAM database authentication roles to prevent data exfiltration to external projects.

Answer

Deploy Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL with a regional High Availability (HA) configuration across two zones, utilizing automatic failover and automated point-in-time backups.
Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL with a regional High Availability (HA) configuration provides automated zone failover, synchronous replication to a standby instance in a secondary zone within the region, automated point-in-time recovery, and supports storage up to 64 TB. This perfectly meets all single-region compliance requirements while optimizing costs and operational overhead.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze workload relational and scalability requirements
The application requires PostgreSQL compatibility, relational join capabilities, ACID compliance, and a projected data footprint of 4 TB in a single GCP region.
Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL fully supports up to 64 TB of storage per instance and handles single-region relational workloads without needing global scale.
2
Evaluate high availability and business continuity constraints
A regional Cloud SQL HA deployment places a primary DB instance in one zone and a synchronous standby instance in a second zone within us-central1.
This satisfies the zero data loss failover, automated point-in-time recovery, and regional SLA requirements.
3
Assess cost and operational efficiency against alternative services
Cloud Spanner provides global multi-region consistency but is cost-prohibitive and unnecessary for a single-region 4 TB PostgreSQL workload.
Choosing Cloud SQL provides a fully managed service that minimizes operational management overhead while remaining cost-effective.

Key Concept

Selecting optimal relational storage based on geographical scope, scale, and cost constraints.
Estimated Time:2m 0s
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