Question

Difficulty: MediumSelecting and Designing Compute and Application Platforms

A digital publishing firm needs to host a newly containerized, stateless HTTP microservice that renders vector graphics on demand. The workload experiences unpredictable traffic spikes throughout the day and stays completely idle overnight. The architectural goal is to minimize operational management overhead and infrastructure cost by automatically scaling down to zero when no traffic is present. Which Google Cloud compute platform should you recommend?

  1. Cloud RunAnswer
  2. B
    Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) Autopilot cluster
  3. C
    Compute Engine Managed Instance Group (MIG) autoscaling on CPU utilization
  4. D
    Compute Engine Virtual Machines with 3-year Committed Use Discounts

Answer

Cloud Run is the optimal compute platform for containerized stateless HTTP microservices that require scaling down to zero and minimal operational overhead.
Cloud Run provides a fully managed serverless compute environment for stateless containers. It automatically scales instances up to handle request traffic bursts and scales down to zero when idle, minimizing both management overhead and resource costs.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze workload statefulness and network protocols
The application is stateless and communicates over standard HTTP web endpoints.
Cloud Run specifically targets containerized stateless applications listening on web ports.
2
Evaluate scaling characteristics and operational overhead constraints
The workload is bursty, idle at night, and requires zero operational infrastructure management.
Cloud Run automatically handles infrastructure management and scales seamlessly from zero to handle inbound request spikes.

Key Concept

Selecting containerized compute platforms based on statelessness, scaling characteristics, and operational overhead.
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