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Difficulty: MediumSelecting and Designing Storage and Database Resources

An enterprise organization is migrating its internal human resources and payroll web application to Google Cloud. The workload operates entirely within a single GCP region, requires standard relational database capabilities with full ACID compliance, and has an estimated dataset size of 1.2 TB. The team needs automated backups, zero-downtime maintenance windows, and regional high availability across two zones. Which database resource should the cloud architect select to meet these technical requirements while minimizing operational complexity and cost?

  1. Provision a Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL instance with High Availability (regional instance with a standby instance in a secondary zone).Answer
  2. B
    Provision a multi-region Cloud Spanner instance with multi-zone replication.
  3. C
    Deploy a self-managed PostgreSQL database on Compute Engine instances and manage disk encryption using Customer-Supplied Encryption Keys (CSEK).
  4. D
    Export database snapshots to Cloud Storage and order a Transfer Appliance for weekly offline database synchronization between availability zones.

Answer

The cloud architect should select a Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL instance configured with High Availability (regional deployment).
Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL configured with High Availability (HA) provides a fully managed relational database platform that supports standard SQL and ACID transactions. It features synchronous storage replication across two zones within a single GCP region and automatic failover, satisfying all availability and storage requirements (1.2 TB is well within Cloud SQL's 64 TB limit) with minimal cost and operational burden.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze database workload requirements
Identified relational ACID requirements, single-region scope, 1.2 TB storage volume, and regional high availability needs.
Determining scale, geographical distribution, and data model narrows the eligible GCP database products.
2
Compare candidate GCP relational database services
Cloud SQL handles single-region relational databases up to 64 TB with built-in zonal failover. Cloud Spanner is optimized for multi-region global scale.
Evaluating managed options prevents selecting over-engineered services that increase cost and complexity.
3
Select the optimal database resource
Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL with HA enabled provides automated regional failover, automated backups, and minimal management overhead.
This satisfies all technical constraints while optimizing for cost and operational effort.

Key Concept

Selecting Cloud SQL versus Cloud Spanner based on workload scope, storage volume, and geographical distribution requirements.
Estimated Time:1m 30s
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Topics

Selecting and Designing Storage and Database Resources