Question

Difficulty: EasyDesigning Infrastructure for Business Requirements and Cost Optimization

A digital marketing agency runs intermittent batch processing jobs to render promotional video clips for ad campaigns. Once rendered, the video files are accessed frequently during the first 30 days, but are rarely accessed after that point. The agency is required to retain these files for 3 years for contract compliance. The agency wants to minimize compute and storage costs while avoiding unnecessary operational management. Which TWO architectural decisions should the agency make to meet these requirements?

  1. Execute the intermittent batch rendering tasks using Cloud Run jobs.Answer
  2. Configure an Object Lifecycle Management policy on Cloud Storage to transition video objects to Coldline Storage after 30 days.Answer
  3. C
    Provision a dedicated, always-running Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) cluster to handle the video rendering tasks.
  4. D
    Store the rendered video files as BLOB data inside Cloud Spanner for long-term archiving and compliance.

Answer

The correct decisions are to execute batch rendering tasks using Cloud Run jobs and to configure Object Lifecycle Management on Cloud Storage to transition video objects to Coldline Storage after 30 days.
Executing intermittent processing using serverless Cloud Run jobs ensures compute costs are incurred only during active rendering runs. Implementing Object Lifecycle Management on Cloud Storage automates moving older video files to Coldline Storage, significantly cutting storage expenses for data accessed rarely after 30 days.

Step-by-Step Solution

1
Analyze the compute workload pattern and operational requirements.
The workload is intermittent batch processing, making serverless container execution (Cloud Run jobs) ideal because it charges only for active execution time and eliminates idle capacity costs.
Running a continuously provisioned compute cluster like GKE leads to paying for unused capacity during idle periods.
2
Analyze the storage access lifecycle and retention requirements.
Media files are actively used for 30 days and then infrequently accessed for 3 years. Transitioning files from Standard to Coldline Storage via lifecycle rules lowers cost while retaining accessibility.
Object storage classes like Coldline offer lower monthly gigabyte costs for data accessed less than once a month, whereas relational database engines like Spanner are prohibitively expensive for binary file storage.

Key Concept

Serverless batch compute right-sizing combined with automated storage lifecycle management to minimize total cost of ownership.
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