A global pharmaceutical company is building a public API service to ingest real-time webhook updates from external clinical research partners. The service workload is stateless, containerized, handles standard HTTPS POST requests, and experiences unpredictable traffic spikes interspersed with prolonged periods of complete inactivity. The enterprise architecture guidelines mandate zero server maintenance, fast automatic scaling down to zero instances during idle periods, and eliminating baseline running costs. Which compute platform should the Cloud Architect select to meet these requirements?
- Deploy the containerized application on Cloud Run with autoscaling configured to scale down to zero instances.Answer
- BDeploy the containerized microservice on a Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) Autopilot cluster using a Horizontal Pod Autoscaler.
- CDeploy the microservice on a Compute Engine Managed Instance Group (MIG) backed by 3-year Committed Use Discounts.
- DDeploy the microservice on Compute Engine Virtual Machines configured with CPU-utilization based autoscaling.
Answer
Deploying the containerized application on Cloud Run with autoscaling configured to scale down to zero instances is the optimal solution because it eliminates operational overhead, handles HTTP webhooks natively, and avoids paying for idle resources.
Cloud Run is designed specifically for stateless containerized microservices receiving web/HTTP requests. It automatically handles infrastructure provisioning, security patching, and autoscaling, including scaling down to zero instances when no requests are being processed, ensuring zero costs during idle periods.
Step-by-Step Solution
Key Concept
Compute Platform Selection for Stateless Containerized HTTP Workloads