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Difficulty: MediumDesigning Infrastructure for Business Requirements and Cost Optimization

A regional retail enterprise is migrating a stateless REST API backend for its customer loyalty application to Google Cloud. The application experiences variable traffic patterns with heavy request volume during daytime business hours and virtually zero traffic overnight. The company's primary business objective is to minimize baseline infrastructure costs and operational management overhead while maintaining high availability during operational hours. Which deployment architecture best meets these business and cost requirements?

  1. Deploy the containerized REST API application to Cloud Run and allow it to scale down to zero instances during idle periods.Answer
  2. B
    Provision a regional Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) Standard cluster with a fixed node pool spread across three availability zones.
  3. C
    Deploy the application on Compute Engine Virtual Machines backed by 3-year Committed Use Discounts sized for peak capacity.
  4. D
    Migrate the application backend service and transactional database to a multi-region Cloud Spanner deployment.

Answer

Deploying the containerized application to Cloud Run with scale-to-zero capability minimizes operational overhead and eliminates idle baseline infrastructure costs.
Deploying the stateless REST API to Cloud Run directly aligns with business goals by providing a fully managed serverless environment. Cloud Run scales automatically based on HTTP traffic, scaling down to zero instances during overnight idle periods so the enterprise incurs no compute costs when the app is not in use, while also eliminating cluster management overhead.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze workload characteristics and business requirements.
Workload is a stateless REST API with high daytime traffic and zero overnight traffic requiring minimal operational overhead and zero idle cost.
Matching compute resources to workload state and usage patterns is essential for cost optimization.
2
Evaluate Google Cloud compute options against operational and cost constraints.
Cloud Run automatically scales containerized stateless services down to zero instances, charging only during request processing time.
Serverless execution avoids paying for unutilized compute infrastructure during non-business hours.
3
Eliminate sub-optimal architectures.
GKE Standard, Compute Engine CUDs for peak capacity, and Cloud Spanner introduce fixed baseline costs and excess operational complexity.
Fixed or over-provisioned infrastructure contradicts the objective of minimizing idle costs for variable workloads.

Key Concept

Serverless compute right-sizing and scale-to-zero cost optimization for stateless workloads
Estimated Time:1m 30s
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Topics

Designing Infrastructure for Business Requirements and Cost Optimization