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Match each enterprise workload requirement to the most appropriate Google Cloud database or storage service based on its data model, consistency guarantees, and operational access pattern.

Click a left item, then click its matching right item

Show answer & explanation

Answer

The globally distributed transactional database maps to Cloud Spanner; the high-throughput time-series IoT ingestion maps to Cloud Bigtable; the unstructured media storage with lifecycle policies maps to Cloud Storage; and the regional relational PostgreSQL database maps to Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL.

Each GCP database and storage product is engineered for specific data models and access patterns: Cloud Spanner handles global multi-region relational transactions; Cloud Bigtable excels at high-speed NoSQL time-series writes; Cloud Storage manages unstructured binary objects with lifecycle tiering; and Cloud SQL handles single-region managed relational engines like PostgreSQL.

Step-by-Step Solution

Analyze the relational and global scaling constraints of the transactional database requirement.

Identified Cloud Spanner as the unique GCP service offering global scale, ANSI SQL support, and strong external consistency.

Standard regional relational options like Cloud SQL do not scale horizontally across multiple regions with global strong consistency.

Evaluate the ingestion rate and write latency requirements for time-series IoT data.

Selected Cloud Bigtable for its high-throughput, low-latency NoSQL key-value/wide-column engine optimized for streaming time-series data.

Relational databases cannot cost-effectively sustain massive continuous IoT write loads with sub-10ms latency.

Review object storage requirements for unstructured files and cost-tiering capabilities.

Selected Cloud Storage due to its object storage model and Object Lifecycle Management feature.

Database services are intended for structured or semi-structured data, whereas unstructured media files require object storage.

Assess the regional managed database requirement for open-source PostgreSQL compatibility.

Matched with Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL.

Cloud SQL provides managed PostgreSQL with built-in regional high availability.

Key Concept

GCP Storage and Database Resource Selection based on Data Model, Scalability, and Access Patterns

Estimated Time:2m 0s

Question 1302Question →

A retail organization is migrating its regional order-processing application to Google Cloud. The application requires a relational database operating strictly within a single Google Cloud region, supporting standard SQL transactions, strong consistency, and automatic multi-zone failover. The expected data dataset size is 350 GB with a peak load of 2,500 operations per second. Additionally, corporate security policy dictates that encryption keys must be managed in Cloud KMS with key rotation controlled by the security team. Which database and key management solution should the cloud architect recommend?

Deploy Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL configured with High Availability (multi-zone) and encrypted using Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK) via Cloud KMS.

Deploy a multi-region Cloud Spanner instance configured with Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK) via Cloud KMS.

Deploy Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL configured with High Availability (multi-zone) using Customer-Supplied Encryption Keys (CSEK) supplied in every API call.

Deploy Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL using basic IAM database authentication alone, assuming IAM permissions sufficiently prevent unauthorized data egress to external Google Cloud Storage buckets.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: Deploy Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL configured with High Availability (multi-zone) and encrypted using Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK) via Cloud KMS.

Answer

Deploy Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL configured with High Availability (multi-zone) and encrypted using Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK) via Cloud KMS.

Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL with High Availability provides a fully managed relational database with multi-zone redundancy tailored for single-region workloads. Utilizing Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK) integrated with Cloud KMS fulfills security requirements for customer control over key lifecycles without raw key handling overhead.

Step-by-Step Solution

Analyze storage data model and scaling scope requirements

The application requires a standard relational ACID database operating entirely within a single region for 350 GB of data.

Single-region relational workloads of this scale are best served by Cloud SQL rather than globally distributed systems like Cloud Spanner.

Determine high availability architecture

Cloud SQL High Availability deployment provisions a primary instance and a synchronous standby instance across two zones in the same region.

This guarantees multi-zone automatic failover satisfying high availability requirements.

Evaluate key management security compliance

Cloud KMS Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK) allow the customer security team to hold key management responsibility while delegating service-level encryption transparently to Google Cloud services.

CMEK meets governance requirements without requiring raw key transmission (CSEK).

Key Concept

Selecting Cloud SQL HA vs Cloud Spanner for regional relational workloads and integrating CMEK

Question 1303Question →

An automotive enterprise is designing a high-availability roadside emergency telemetry ingestion platform on Google Cloud. The workload consists of lightweight, stateless HTTP telemetry pings from connected vehicles. The system requires high availability across multiple GCP regions with minimal operational management overhead. Additionally, the platform must establish secure hybrid connectivity to sync telemetry logs back to an on-premises datacenter at an aggregate bandwidth of $1.2\text{ Gbps}$ . Which TWO architectural decisions should you make to satisfy these technical requirements? (Select TWO.)

Select all that apply

Deploy the stateless telemetry ingestion API on Cloud Run in multiple regions behind a Global External Application Load Balancer.

Provision GKE Enterprise clusters across multiple regions with dedicated node pools to host the stateless HTTP ingestion microservices.

Establish high-availability (HA) Cloud VPN tunnels between the on-premises datacenter and Google Cloud using dynamic routing with Cloud Router.

Provision a 10 Gbps Dedicated Interconnect pair between the on-premises location and the nearest Google Cloud Colocation facility.

Configure VPC Network Peering to transitively route on-premises telemetry data through a central transit VPC to backend workload VPCs.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: Deploy the stateless telemetry ingestion API on Cloud Run in multiple regions behind a Global External Application Load Balancer.; Establish high-availability (HA) Cloud VPN tunnels between the on-premises datacenter and Google Cloud using dynamic routing with Cloud Router.

Answer

The optimal architectural approach is to deploy the stateless HTTP API on Cloud Run in multiple regions behind a Global External Application Load Balancer, and establish high-availability (HA) Cloud VPN tunnels with Cloud Router for hybrid connectivity.

Deploying stateless microservices on Cloud Run across regions behind a Global External Application Load Balancer ensures multi-region high availability with zero server management. Pairing this with HA Cloud VPN provides cost-effective, SLA-backed hybrid connectivity capable of handling up to 3 Gbps per tunnel, perfectly matching the 1.2 Gbps requirements.

Step-by-Step Solution

Evaluate compute requirement for stateless HTTP service

Cloud Run provides serverless scaling and zero cluster management for stateless containerized APIs, fulfilling technical requirements with minimal operational overhead.

Choosing serverless over Kubernetes avoids cluster management and unneeded baseline resource costs.

Evaluate hybrid network bandwidth requirement (

1.2\text{ Gbps}

)

HA VPN supplies up to

3.0\text{ Gbps}

per tunnel, making it the right balance of cost, complexity, and availability for bandwidth needs under

3\text{ Gbps}

Dedicated Interconnect requires high fixed costs and physical infrastructure setup that is unnecessary for

1.2\text{ Gbps}

throughput.

Key Concept

Designing for High Availability and Technical Requirements

Question 1304Question →

A regional logistics provider is re-platforming its central dispatch system on Google Cloud. The workload consists of a lightweight, stateless REST API for route management and a 250 GB relational database. The solution must run within a single GCP region (us-central1), support automatic zonal failover with zero RPO for database transactions within the region, and minimize infrastructure management overhead. Which cloud architecture should you recommend?

Deploy the stateless REST API to Cloud Run and host the database on Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL configured with High Availability (regional instance with primary and standby zones).

Deploy the stateless REST API to Cloud Run and provision a multi-region Cloud Spanner instance to store the transactional relational data.

Deploy a GKE Autopilot cluster across three zones to run both the stateless REST API containers and self-managed PostgreSQL database containers using StatefulSets.

Deploy the REST API on Compute Engine VMs in a Managed Instance Group (MIG) behind an Application Load Balancer, and configure the load balancer health checks to execute direct queries against the database backend.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: Deploy the stateless REST API to Cloud Run and host the database on Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL configured with High Availability (regional instance with primary and standby zones).

Answer

Deploy the stateless REST API to Cloud Run and host the database on Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL configured with High Availability (regional instance with primary and standby zones).

Combining Cloud Run for stateless containers with Cloud SQL High Availability satisfies all requirements: serverless execution minimizes operational overhead, while regional Cloud SQL HA ensures zero RPO and automatic failover across zones within us-central1 without over-engineering.

Step-by-Step Solution

Analyze the compute requirements for the stateless API

Cloud Run allows containerized stateless services to scale automatically while eliminating compute infrastructure management.

The requirement explicitly requests minimal operational management overhead for a stateless REST API.

Evaluate data scale, consistency, and availability requirements for the database tier

Cloud SQL High Availability (HA) uses synchronous replication to a secondary zone within the region, guaranteeing zero RPO and fast RTO during a zonal failure.

The workload is confined to a single region with a 250 GB footprint, making regional Cloud SQL HA the ideal fit rather than globally distributed database solutions.

Key Concept

Single-Region High Availability and Managed Infrastructure Selection

Question 1305Question →

An enterprise logistics company is designing a new data architecture on Google Cloud for two distinct workloads running within a single GCP region:

1. A transactional order-processing engine requiring standard ANSI SQL support, single-region high availability with automatic zonal failover, and key governance managed via Cloud KMS.
2. A real-time audit logging component receiving thousands of append-only time-series events per second, requiring sub-10ms key-value write latencies and time-range scan capabilities.

Which TWO architectural storage and database service selections should the Cloud Architect make to fulfill these requirements with optimal cost and performance? (Select TWO)

Select all that apply

Provision Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL configured with High Availability (HA) across zones and Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK) for the transactional order-processing engine.

Provision Cloud Spanner as the transactional engine to achieve multi-zone consistency within the single region.

Provision Cloud Bigtable as the database engine for the high-throughput time-series audit logging component.

Implement Customer-Supplied Encryption Keys (CSEK) managed directly within application code to encrypt the transactional database storage.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: Provision Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL configured with High Availability (HA) across zones and Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK) for the transactional order-processing engine.; Provision Cloud Bigtable as the database engine for the high-throughput time-series audit logging component.

Answer

The architect should choose Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL configured with High Availability (HA) and Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK) for the transactional engine, and Cloud Bigtable for the high-throughput time-series audit logging component.

For single-region relational workloads requiring SQL compliance, automatic zonal failover, and key management integration, Cloud SQL configured with HA and CMEK is the cost-effective solution. For high-volume append-only time-series data needing low-latency writes and range queries, Cloud Bigtable provides optimized NoSQL performance.

Step-by-Step Solution

Analyze the transactional database requirements

The transactional workload needs full SQL compliance, single-region high availability, and Cloud KMS CMEK integration.

Cloud SQL with HA delivers zonal failover and CMEK support at lower cost than Cloud Spanner for localized single-region applications.

Analyze the audit log workload requirements

The audit logging workload requires append-only time-series writes with sub-10ms latency and key-range scans.

Cloud Bigtable is optimized for scalable, low-latency NoSQL time-series data streams.

Key Concept

Selecting optimal Google Cloud storage and database services based on data access patterns, scalability needs, and enterprise encryption requirements.

Question 1306Question →

An e-commerce platform is migrating its core order processing service to Google Cloud. The workload consists of a stateless HTTP API that experiences unpredictable request bursts and a relational database with a 400 GB dataset requiring standard ACID transactions within a single region. The solution must guarantee 99.95% availability with automated zonal failover while requiring minimal operational management overhead. Which infrastructure architecture should you recommend?

Deploy the HTTP API to Cloud Run configured across multiple zones and provision a High Availability (HA) Cloud SQL instance with a standby replica in a secondary zone within the same region.

Deploy the HTTP API to a regional Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) cluster with node pools spanning three zones and provision a High Availability (HA) Cloud SQL instance.

Deploy the HTTP API to Cloud Run and provision a multi-region Cloud Spanner instance to host the relational database.

Deploy the HTTP API on Compute Engine Managed Instance Groups using fixed CPU-based autoscaling thresholds across zones and connect to an HA Cloud SQL instance via HA VPN.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: Deploy the HTTP API to Cloud Run configured across multiple zones and provision a High Availability (HA) Cloud SQL instance with a standby replica in a secondary zone within the same region.

Answer

Deploy the HTTP API to Cloud Run configured across multiple zones and provision a High Availability (HA) Cloud SQL instance with a standby replica in a secondary zone within the same region.

Combining Cloud Run with a High Availability Cloud SQL instance provides a fully managed, serverless, high-availability architecture within a single region. Cloud Run automatically handles multi-zone request balancing and scaling for stateless containerized HTTP workloads, while HA Cloud SQL utilizes synchronous storage replication and automated failover to a standby zone, satisfying the 99.95% availability target with minimal operational overhead.

Step-by-Step Solution

Evaluate compute tier requirements

Identify stateless HTTP microservice pattern requiring low operational overhead and multi-zonal scaling.

Cloud Run automatically scales stateless containers across zones without infrastructure administration.

Evaluate database tier requirements

Identify a single-region 400 GB relational database needing ACID compliance and high availability.

Cloud SQL in High Availability (HA) configuration uses regional persistent disks and a standby replica in a separate zone within the same region to support automatic failover.

Synthesize optimal high-availability architecture

Combine Cloud Run with HA Cloud SQL to achieve 99.95% availability while minimizing operational management.

This combination meets all availability and technical requirements without over-engineering.

Key Concept

Designing High Availability Architectures for Stateless Compute and Relational Data on GCP

Question 1307Question →

A global media organization is architecting a core video metadata management service on Google Cloud. The system requires a relational database that can support strong consistency, zero Recovery Point Objective ( $RPO = 0$ ), and continuous multi-region high availability with a $99.999\%$ uptime Service Level Objective ( $SLO$ ) during regional outages. Which database architecture best satisfies these technical availability and disaster recovery requirements with minimal operational management?

Provision a multi-region Cloud Spanner instance across target GCP regions.

Provision a Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL instance with High Availability (regional multi-zone) and cross-region read replicas.

Deploy a Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) cluster running self-managed PostgreSQL with asynchronous replication to a warm standby region.

Establish HA VPN connections between two regions and deploy dual-active Cloud SQL instances using third-party replication scripts.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: Provision a multi-region Cloud Spanner instance across target GCP regions.

Answer

Provision a multi-region Cloud Spanner instance across target GCP regions.

Cloud Spanner multi-region configurations deliver fully managed, globally distributed relational transactions with strong consistency and external consistency (TrueTime API). Multi-region Spanner configurations natively provide a 99.999% SLA and automatic synchronous multi-region failover, fulfilling the zero RPO requirement during a regional outage without requiring application-level failover logic.

Step-by-Step Solution

Analyze the technical requirements

Identified requirements: relational schema, strong consistency, zero RPO (

RPO = 0

), multi-region high availability (

99.999\%

availability), and minimal operational overhead.

Matching database capabilities directly against SLA/SLO and DR constraints is necessary to select the correct GCP managed service.

Evaluate regional vs multi-region database capabilities in Google Cloud

Cloud SQL HA is regional (multi-zone) with 99.95% SLA and asynchronous cross-region replication. Cloud Spanner Multi-Region offers built-in synchronous replication across regions with 99.999% SLA and zero RPO failover.

Cloud Spanner uses TrueTime and Paxos consensus to achieve external consistency and synchronous cross-region writes.

Select the optimal architecture

Cloud Spanner multi-region instance satisfies all uptime, consistency, and RPO requirements natively.

Avoids custom scripts, manual failover procedures, or data loss associated with asynchronous replication.

Key Concept

Multi-Region High Availability & Consistency with Cloud Spanner

Question 1308Question →

Match each enterprise data workload requirement to the most appropriate Google Cloud storage or database service based on its data model, latency constraints, and consistency guarantees.

Click a left item, then click its matching right item

Show answer & explanation

Answer

High-throughput smart meter time-series metrics pair with Cloud Bigtable; globally distributed relational transactions pair with Cloud Spanner; unstructured compliance archives pair with Cloud Storage with Bucket Lock; regional relational applications pair with Cloud SQL.

Each requirement aligns directly with the core strengths of the paired GCP service: Cloud Bigtable is designed for high-scale NoSQL time-series streams; Cloud Spanner provides horizontal scaling for global relational ACID databases; Cloud Storage with Bucket Lock satisfies immutable retention regulatory mandates; Cloud SQL is ideal for standard regional relational databases.

Step-by-Step Solution

Analyze the data model and operational scale of each workload requirement.

Workloads demand wide-column time-series ingestion, global relational consistency, immutable object archival, and regional relational transactional operations.

Categorizing data models and access patterns narrows down valid Google Cloud storage categories.

Map specific performance, compliance, and scope constraints to native GCP storage service features.

Cloud Bigtable delivers high-throughput low-latency NoSQL ingest; Cloud Spanner handles global multi-region ACID transactions; Cloud Storage with Bucket Lock guarantees immutable WORM storage; Cloud SQL handles standard regional SQL workloads.

Aligning latency thresholds, replication boundaries, and consistency models ensures an architectural fit.

Key Concept

Selecting GCP database and storage services based on access pattern, consistency guarantees, latency, and scalability scope

Question 1309Question →

A regional online grocery delivery service in North America is architecting a relational database for managing customer order fulfillments. The application operates entirely within one Google Cloud region, requires standard ANSI SQL support with ACID guarantees, and has a storage footprint projected at 300 GB. The infrastructure team wants a fully managed database solution that minimizes operational overhead and cost while providing regional automated failover. Which database strategy best satisfies these requirements?

Deploy a Cloud SQL instance with a regional high-availability configuration across two zones.

Deploy a Cloud Spanner instance configured with multi-region replication to guarantee high availability and relational integrity.

Configure a Cloud SQL instance encrypted with Customer-Supplied Encryption Keys (CSEK) managed on-premises to meet platform encryption standards.

Deploy a Cloud Bigtable instance for the fulfillment data, relying strictly on IAM roles to prevent unauthorized data exfiltration.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: Deploy a Cloud SQL instance with a regional high-availability configuration across two zones.

Answer

The optimal architecture is to deploy a Cloud SQL instance with a regional high-availability configuration across two zones.

For a single-region relational database workload under 1 TB requiring standard ANSI SQL and high availability, Cloud SQL configured with regional HA provides automated zonal failover, full ACID compliance, and minimal operational overhead at a significantly lower cost than Cloud Spanner.

Step-by-Step Solution

Analyze the database workload data model and scale requirements.

The application requires ANSI SQL compliance, ACID transactions, and has a 300 GB footprint confined to a single region.

Relational databases under a few terabytes operating in a single region map directly to Cloud SQL rather than horizontally scaled NoSQL or global relational engines.

Evaluate the availability and operational constraints.

Automated failover within the region is required while minimizing operational cost.

Cloud SQL regional High Availability (HA) provisions a primary instance and a synchronous standby instance in a secondary zone within the same region, providing automatic failover.

Select the service that meets all technical constraints at lowest cost/complexity.

Cloud SQL with regional HA satisfies all constraints without over-provisioning global infrastructure.

Cloud Spanner provides global scale at significantly higher cost, which is unneeded for single-region relational workloads.

Key Concept

Selecting Cloud SQL vs. Cloud Spanner based on global availability needs, data size, and architectural complexity.

Estimated Time:1m 30s

Question 1310Question →

A global digital publishing enterprise is re-architecting its core media platform on Google Cloud. The system consists of a stateless HTTP API backend service and a transactional relational database holding article metadata and subscription state. The technical requirements mandate 99.99% multi-regional uptime, a strict zero Recovery Point Objective ( $RPO = 0$ ) for transactional database updates across regions, and automatic traffic routing away from an impaired region. Which TWO architectural components should you select to satisfy these requirements?

Select all that apply

Deploy the stateless API service to Cloud Run across multiple GCP regions and front them with a Global External Application Load Balancer.

Use a Cloud Spanner database with a multi-region instance configuration for article metadata and subscription state.

Deploy a regional Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) cluster in a single region and rely on manual cluster node re-provisioning for disaster recovery.

Provision a Primary Cloud SQL instance with cross-region asynchronous read replicas to achieve zero multi-region RPO.

Configure the HTTP load balancer health check path to execute a synchronous SELECT query against the relational database on every ping.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: Deploy the stateless API service to Cloud Run across multiple GCP regions and front them with a Global External Application Load Balancer.; Use a Cloud Spanner database with a multi-region instance configuration for article metadata and subscription state.

Answer

The platform should be architected using Cloud Run deployed across multiple GCP regions behind a Global External Application Load Balancer alongside a multi-region Cloud Spanner database instance.

Combining multi-region Cloud Run services under a Global External Application Load Balancer ensures traffic is automatically directed to healthy regional endpoints. Using Cloud Spanner with a multi-region configuration provides multi-region synchronous transactional replication, satisfying the requirement for

RPO = 0

and high availability.

Step-by-Step Solution

Evaluate compute tier requirements for multi-region high availability

Cloud Run deployed in multiple regions and fronted by a Global External Application Load Balancer provides automatic routing and seamless multi-region failover for stateless HTTP API workloads.

Stateless microservices do not require complex cluster management (like GKE) to achieve multi-region availability.

Evaluate relational database requirements for zero multi-region RPO

Cloud Spanner multi-region configurations utilize Paxos-based synchronous replication to guarantee strong consistency and zero data loss (

RPO = 0

) across regions.

Asynchronous multi-region database solutions (such as Cloud SQL cross-region replicas) inherently expose transactions to potential data loss (

RPO > 0

) upon primary region outage.

Key Concept

Designing Multi-Region High Availability with Zero RPO

Question 1311Question →

A global gaming enterprise is designing the backend data architecture for a multiplayer game hosted on Google Cloud. The system has two primary workload requirements:

1. Low-latency, high-throughput key-value storage for millions of active player sessions and real-time state updates.
2. A relational database for financial transactions and account balances that requires global scale across multi-region deployments with strong ACID consistency.

Which TWO storage and database design decisions should you recommend to meet these requirements?

Select all that apply

Provision Cloud Bigtable to handle player session data and active game state.

Provision Cloud Spanner for user financial transactions and account balances.

Provision Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL with cross-region read replicas for financial transactions and account balances.

Configure VPC Service Controls around Cloud Storage buckets to replace IAM access policies for player telemetry intake.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: Provision Cloud Bigtable to handle player session data and active game state.; Provision Cloud Spanner for user financial transactions and account balances.

Answer

The optimal architecture combines Cloud Bigtable for high-throughput, low-latency session state and Cloud Spanner for globally consistent multi-region financial transactions.

Cloud Bigtable provides ideal key-value performance for real-time session state, while Cloud Spanner is engineered specifically for globally distributed relational data requiring multi-region writes and strict ACID transactions.

Step-by-Step Solution

Analyze key-value session storage requirements.

Cloud Bigtable is selected because it offers low-latency, high-throughput NoSQL capabilities capable of scaling to millions of concurrent operations.

Relational databases or document stores would introduce latency overhead or scaling bottlenecks for real-time game state.

Analyze financial transaction database requirements.

Cloud Spanner is selected because it delivers multi-region relational schema capabilities with strong ACID consistency across global regions.

Cloud SQL cannot support multi-region write scale or global external consistency.

Key Concept

Selecting GCP database services based on access pattern, consistency model, and regional scale requirements

Estimated Time:1m 30s

Question 1312Question →

A financial technology company is architecting a core payment fraud detection service on Google Cloud. The workload processes stateless HTTP requests originating from client applications globally and requires a service availability SLA of 99.99%. The underlying relational transaction database must support high-throughput global writes, maintain synchronous multi-region consistency, and guarantee zero Recovery Point Objective (RPO) and immediate Recovery Time Objective (RTO) in the event of an entire Google Cloud region failure. Which infrastructure design meets these technical and high availability requirements while minimizing operational management overhead?

Deploy the stateless service on Cloud Run across multiple regions behind an External HTTP(S) Load Balancer, and use a multi-region Cloud Spanner database instance.

Deploy the stateless service on a regional Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) Autopilot cluster, and use a multi-region Cloud Spanner database instance.

Deploy the stateless service on Cloud Run across multiple regions behind an External HTTP(S) Load Balancer, and use Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL with cross-region read replicas.

Deploy the stateless service on Cloud Run across multiple regions, and use a single-region Cloud SQL instance with High Availability (HA) enabled across two zones.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: Deploy the stateless service on Cloud Run across multiple regions behind an External HTTP(S) Load Balancer, and use a multi-region Cloud Spanner database instance.

Answer

Deploying the stateless application on multi-region Cloud Run integrated with a multi-region Cloud Spanner database fulfills all high availability, multi-region failover, zero RPO, and minimal management overhead criteria.

Combining multi-region Cloud Run with a multi-region Cloud Spanner instance delivers a fully managed architecture capable of surviving a complete regional failure without data loss (RPO = 0) or manual intervention. Cloud Run minimizes management overhead for stateless web services, while Cloud Spanner provides multi-region synchronous replication for transactional relational data.

Step-by-Step Solution

Evaluate compute requirements for stateless HTTP processing and operational overhead.

Cloud Run provides serverless container deployment that automatically scales to zero and scales out across multiple regions without requiring cluster administration, making it preferred over GKE for simple stateless microservices.

Minimizing operational complexity requires avoiding container cluster management when a serverless option satisfies all scaling and availability targets.

Evaluate relational database requirements for high availability and disaster recovery.

Cloud Spanner configured with a multi-region instance deployment provides synchronous replication across regions with Paxos consensus, ensuring strict serializability, zero RPO, and automatic multi-region failover.

Cloud SQL relies on asynchronous replication across regions, which risks data loss (violating RPO = 0) during a regional disaster.

Key Concept

Multi-region high availability architectures combining serverless compute (Cloud Run) and globally synchronous relational storage (Cloud Spanner)

Estimated Time:1m 30s

Question 1313Question →

A global pharmaceutical company is architecting a data storage solution on Google Cloud for a regional clinical trial inventory tracking application. The relational database will host a 400 GB dataset located entirely within a single GCP region (`us-central1`) to satisfy strict data residency requirements. The workload experiences standard OLTP transactional traffic with predictable growth unlikely to exceed 2 TB over the next three years. The database must automatically fail over to a secondary zone during a zonal outage, and security compliance mandates that encryption keys must be generated and rotated by the enterprise security team using Google Cloud KMS. Which database architecture best satisfies these technical and compliance requirements while avoiding unnecessary cost and complexity?

Deploy a multi-region Cloud Spanner instance configured with Customer-Supplied Encryption Keys (CSEK).

Deploy a Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL regional instance configured for High Availability (HA) across two zones, integrated with Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK) via Cloud KMS.

Deploy a Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL regional instance configured for High Availability (HA), utilizing Customer-Supplied Encryption Keys (CSEK) supplied during instance creation.

Export operational updates daily into Cloud Storage and transfer them using a Transfer Appliance to maintain synchronous regional relational consistency.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: Deploy a Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL regional instance configured for High Availability (HA) across two zones, integrated with Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK) via Cloud KMS.

Answer

Deploy a Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL regional instance configured for High Availability (HA) across two zones, integrated with Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK) via Cloud KMS.

The correct architecture uses Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL configured for High Availability (HA) with Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK). Cloud SQL supports relational datasets up to 64 TB within a single region and provides automatic cross-zone failover via synchronous replication to a standby instance. Integrating with Cloud KMS via CMEK allows enterprise security teams to retain authority over key generation, rotation, and lifecycle management.

Step-by-Step Solution

Evaluate workload scale and regional data residency constraints.

The dataset is 400 GB located in a single region with predictable moderate growth (< 2 TB), making Cloud SQL standard relational instances the optimal choice over horizontally scalable global solutions like Cloud Spanner.

Cloud SQL handles relational database sizes up to 64 TB within a single region cost-effectively without multi-region sharding overhead.

Assess high availability requirements for zonal resilience.

Configuring Cloud SQL in High Availability (HA) mode provisions a primary instance in one zone and a standby instance in a second zone within the same region with synchronous replication.

Zonal failover is handled automatically by Cloud SQL HA in the event of an outage in the primary zone.

Verify security and key management requirements.

Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK) using Cloud KMS allow internal security teams to retain key control and manage rotation policies for Cloud SQL data at rest.

Cloud SQL supports CMEK via Cloud KMS, whereas Customer-Supplied Encryption Keys (CSEK) are not supported on Cloud SQL database instances.

Key Concept

Selecting Cloud SQL for regional relational workloads under multi-terabyte scale with High Availability and CMEK key compliance.

Question 1314Question →

Match each workload storage requirement to the most appropriate Google Cloud database or storage service based on data access patterns, scalability, and consistency models.

Click a left item, then click its matching right item

Show answer & explanation

Answer

Low-latency key-value feature serving maps to Cloud Bigtable; Global relational trade settlement with strong consistency maps to Cloud Spanner; Regional relational CRM application maps to Cloud SQL; Unstructured media assets and log archives with lifecycle policies map to Cloud Storage.

Each requirement directly matches the core capability of the corresponding GCP service: Cloud Bigtable for high-throughput NoSQL key-value lookups; Cloud Spanner for global multi-region relational ACID workloads; Cloud SQL for standard regional relational databases; and Cloud Storage for unstructured object storage with lifecycle management.

Step-by-Step Solution

Analyze access pattern and throughput demands for real-time recommendations.

Identified low-latency NoSQL key-value requirement, which aligns directly with Cloud Bigtable.

Cloud Bigtable provides sub-10ms performance at scale for key-value access patterns.

Evaluate transactional and consistency requirements for global financial trade settlement.

Identified global ACID compliance and horizontal scalability, which requires Cloud Spanner.

Cloud Spanner is the only fully managed GCP database delivering global scale combined with strong relational ACID transactions.

Evaluate regional relational database needs for a CRM application.

Selected Cloud SQL for standard regional relational engine management.

Cloud SQL offers managed PostgreSQL/MySQL/SQL Server with automated backups, HA, and read replicas within a single region.

Determine appropriate service for unstructured media files and log lifecycle management.

Selected Cloud Storage.

Cloud Storage is optimized for unstructured blob data and provides automated lifecycle transitions to lower-cost tiers.

Key Concept

GCP Storage and Database Resource Selection Criteria

Estimated Time:1m 30s

Question 1315Question →

An international hospitality enterprise is architecting its real-time global reservation system on Google Cloud. The system must maintain an availability target of 99.99%, a Recovery Time Objective (RTO) of under 1 minute, and a Recovery Point Objective (RPO) of zero for transactional booking data across North America and Europe. The application backend consists of lightweight, stateless containerized HTTP microservices subject to unpredictable traffic bursts. Which infrastructure design meets these high-availability and technical requirements while minimizing operational overhead?

Deploy the stateless microservices on Cloud Run across multiple regions behind a Global External Application Load Balancer, and store transactional reservation data in a Cloud Spanner multi-region instance configuration.

Deploy regional Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) clusters in both continents managed by Anthos Service Mesh, and store reservation data in a Cloud Spanner multi-region instance configuration.

Deploy the stateless microservices on Cloud Run across multiple regions behind a Global External Application Load Balancer, and store reservation data in a primary Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL instance with a cross-region read replica.

Deploy the stateless microservices on Compute Engine regional Managed Instance Groups (MIGs), backing up database transactions via hourly Cloud Storage exports to be restored in a secondary region upon failover.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: Deploy the stateless microservices on Cloud Run across multiple regions behind a Global External Application Load Balancer, and store transactional reservation data in a Cloud Spanner multi-region instance configuration.

Answer

Deploying the stateless microservices on Cloud Run across multiple regions behind a Global External Application Load Balancer combined with a Cloud Spanner multi-region instance configuration best meets all availability, RTO, RPO, and operational requirements.

The combination of Cloud Run and Cloud Spanner multi-region fulfills all technical constraints. Cloud Run handles stateless containerized HTTP microservices with automatic regional scaling and zero management of Kubernetes clusters. Cloud Spanner multi-region uses synchronous multi-region replication via Paxos to deliver 99.999% availability, zero RPO (no transaction loss), and automatic sub-minute failover (RTO < 1 min).

Step-by-Step Solution

Evaluate compute options for stateless HTTP microservices with variable traffic and low operational overhead.

Cloud Run provides serverless container hosting that automatically scales from zero to meet traffic spikes without managing node pools or cluster control planes.

Choosing serverless over GKE avoids infrastructure management overhead for simple stateless services.

Evaluate database options against high availability (99.99%), zero RPO, and sub-minute RTO multi-region requirements.

Cloud Spanner multi-region configurations utilize synchronous Paxos consensus across regional zones to deliver multi-region active-active read/write capabilities with zero data loss (RPO = 0) and seamless failover.

Cloud SQL relies on asynchronous cross-region replication which incurs data loss lag (RPO > 0), whereas Cloud Spanner natively provides synchronous multi-region consistency.

Key Concept

Designing multi-region active-active architectures combining serverless compute and globally consistent synchronous databases for high availability and strict RTO/RPO targets.

Question 1316Question →

A healthcare provider is designing the backend database architecture for a patient scheduling system hosted in a single Google Cloud region. The application requires a fully managed relational database supporting standard SQL queries and ACID transactions, with automatic failover across zones to ensure high availability. The compliance team mandates that encryption keys for data at rest must be stored and rotated in Google Cloud KMS without requiring the operations team to manage raw key material directly. Which database architecture should you recommend to meet these technical and compliance requirements with minimal operational cost?

Provision a Cloud SQL database instance in High Availability (HA) configuration encrypted with Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK) stored in Cloud KMS.

Provision a multi-region Cloud Spanner instance encrypted with Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK) stored in Cloud KMS.

Provision a Cloud SQL database instance in High Availability (HA) configuration using Customer-Supplied Encryption Keys (CSEK) provided at instance creation.

Provision a single-zone Cloud SQL instance and configure continuous backup exports to Cloud Storage protected by standard IAM bucket permissions.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: Provision a Cloud SQL database instance in High Availability (HA) configuration encrypted with Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK) stored in Cloud KMS.

Answer

Provision a Cloud SQL database instance in High Availability (HA) configuration encrypted with Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK) stored in Cloud KMS.

The correct answer recommends Cloud SQL configured for High Availability (HA) paired with Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK) via Cloud KMS. Cloud SQL HA provisions primary and standby instances in separate zones within a single region, satisfying the requirement for automatic cross-zone failover and standard relational SQL ACID transactions. Utilizing CMEK fulfills compliance and key management requirements by storing keys in Cloud KMS without forcing the operations team to handle raw key material.

Step-by-Step Solution

Analyze database workload requirements

The application requires standard relational SQL capabilities, ACID compliance, single-region deployment, and zonal failover (High Availability). Cloud SQL HA satisfies these requirements cost-effectively.

Cloud SQL provides fully managed relational capabilities with regional HA (primary and standby instances across zones) without the premium multi-region global scale pricing of Cloud Spanner.

Evaluate key management and security governance constraints

The policy requires Cloud KMS key integration and automatic key rotation without managing raw key material.

Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK) natively integrate with Cloud KMS to allow automated key rotation and centralized audit logging without the burden of storing or supplying raw key strings manually (CSEK).

Synthesize optimal database and storage service configuration

Combining Cloud SQL HA with CMEK satisfies all availability, relational integrity, security, and cost constraints.

This setup provides the required zonal failover and compliance standards while avoiding over-provisioning.

Key Concept

Selecting Cloud SQL HA with CMEK for Regional Relational Workloads

Question 1317Question →

A telecommunications provider is designing a mission-critical subscriber authentication service on Google Cloud. The architecture must achieve a 99.99% availability SLA. The service processes stateless API requests from mobile base stations and requires a dedicated private hybrid network connection between on-premises core facilities and Google Cloud capable of sustaining a minimum guaranteed bandwidth of 10 Gbps with high availability. Which TWO architectural decisions should you recommend to meet these technical and availability requirements?

Select all that apply

Deploy the stateless API backend onto Cloud Run across multiple GCP regions fronted by a Global External Application Load Balancer.

Provision Dedicated Interconnect with redundant connections across two distinct edge availability domains.

Establish HA VPN connections with four active tunnels over the public internet to deliver the required 10 Gbps throughput.

Deploy a multi-zone Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) cluster in a single region with custom ingress controllers to run the stateless API.

Use Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL with cross-region read replicas configured for manual failover in disaster recovery scenarios.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: Deploy the stateless API backend onto Cloud Run across multiple GCP regions fronted by a Global External Application Load Balancer.; Provision Dedicated Interconnect with redundant connections across two distinct edge availability domains.

Answer

The recommended solution is to deploy the stateless backend on multi-region Cloud Run instances behind a Global External Application Load Balancer, and to establish Dedicated Interconnect with redundant circuits across two edge availability domains.

Deploying stateless APIs to multi-region Cloud Run instances fronted by a Global External Application Load Balancer provides seamless global failover and scaling. Dedicated Interconnect configured across redundant edge availability domains guarantees at least 10 Gbps bandwidth and meets the 99.99% connectivity SLA requirement.

Step-by-Step Solution

Analyze compute tier high availability requirements for stateless APIs.

Cloud Run across multiple GCP regions paired with Global External Application Load Balancing provides active-active multi-region failover and autoscaling without infrastructure management overhead.

Stateless HTTP microservices achieve higher reliability and lower operational complexity using serverless platforms rather than managing Kubernetes infrastructure.

Evaluate hybrid connectivity throughput and SLA requirements.

Dedicated Interconnect with 10 Gbps connections configured across dual edge availability domains satisfies both the high-bandwidth (10 Gbps+) and 99.99% uptime SLA requirements.

HA VPN cannot reliably guarantee 10 Gbps single-connection capacity, whereas Dedicated Interconnect is designed for enterprise high-bandwidth hybrid networking.

Key Concept

High Availability and Hybrid Connectivity Architecture Design

Estimated Time:1m 30s

Question 1318Question →

A financial technology enterprise is planning to migrate its core online transaction processing (OLTP) application from an on-premises PostgreSQL database to Google Cloud. The application requires standard relational SQL capabilities, strong ACID compliance, a 99.95% availability SLA within a single GCP region, and sub-10 millisecond write latency. The workload does not require global multi-region distribution or petabyte-scale horizontal scale-out. To minimize operational complexity and unnecessary costs while satisfying all technical requirements, which database resource strategy should you choose?

Deploy a Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL instance configured with High Availability (regional failover) across two zones in the target region.

Deploy a multi-region Cloud Spanner instance configured with multi-region database replication.

Order a GCP Transfer Appliance to physically transfer PostgreSQL database backups into BigQuery for operational OLTP processing.

Deploy Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL in a single zone and rely solely on IAM object permissions without configuring a standby failover instance or VPC Service Controls.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: Deploy a Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL instance configured with High Availability (regional failover) across two zones in the target region.

Answer

Deploy a Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL instance configured with High Availability (regional failover) across two zones in the target region.

The correct option proposes deploying Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL with High Availability configured across two zones. This directly fulfills all technical criteria—native PostgreSQL support, sub-10ms latency, relational ACID compliance, and a 99.95% regional availability SLA—while avoiding the higher cost and complexity of globally distributed databases.

Step-by-Step Solution

Analyze workload requirements

Identified OLTP access patterns requiring native PostgreSQL compatibility, sub-10ms write latency, ACID transactions, single-region deployment, and a 99.95% availability SLA.

Matching technical requirements to the appropriate managed database prevents over-provisioning and reduces operational cost.

Evaluate GCP managed database options

Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL configured with High Availability (regional failover) provides automated synchronous replication to a secondary zone, delivering 99.95% SLA within a single region.

Cloud Spanner is designed for globally distributed or massive horizontally scaled relational workloads, which is over-engineered and cost-prohibitive for standard single-region OLTP needs.

Key Concept

Selecting Cloud SQL HA vs. Cloud Spanner for Regional Relational OLTP Workloads

Estimated Time:1m 30s

Question 1319Question →

A global pharmaceutical enterprise is architecting a mission-critical clinical trial telemetry platform on Google Cloud. The system requires a relational database that guarantees automatic zonal failover with minimal Recovery Time Objective (RTO) within a single region. Additionally, the on-premises laboratory network requires a high-availability, dedicated 10 Gbps private connection to the Google Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) with high throughput and low latency. Which TWO architectural components should the cloud architect select to meet these technical and availability requirements? (Select TWO.)

Select all that apply

Provision Cloud SQL configured with regional High Availability (HA) using a primary instance in one zone and a standby instance in a secondary zone within the target region.

Establish Dedicated Interconnect connections with redundant circuits across two edge locations to connect the on-premises network to Google Cloud.

Deploy a multi-region Cloud Spanner instance as the relational database engine for the single-region clinical trial platform.

Configure standard HA VPN tunnels over the public internet to deliver 10 Gbps hybrid network throughput.

Configure backend application compute autoscaling strictly on CPU utilization metrics to handle incoming network-heavy laboratory payloads.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: Provision Cloud SQL configured with regional High Availability (HA) using a primary instance in one zone and a standby instance in a secondary zone within the target region.; Establish Dedicated Interconnect connections with redundant circuits across two edge locations to connect the on-premises network to Google Cloud.

Answer

The architect should deploy Cloud SQL in a regional High Availability configuration and establish Dedicated Interconnect redundant connections for 10 Gbps dedicated hybrid networking.

To achieve single-region database high availability with automatic zonal failover, Cloud SQL HA (High Availability) mode provisions a primary and synchronous standby instance across distinct zones. For hybrid network connectivity needing 10 Gbps dedicated bandwidth with enterprise SLA, Dedicated Interconnect is required because Cloud VPN cannot deliver 10 Gbps per link.

Step-by-Step Solution

Analyze database availability requirements

The requirements demand a single-region relational database with zonal automatic failover and minimal RTO.

Cloud SQL with regional HA provides automated failover to a synchronous standby instance in a different zone within the same region.

Analyze hybrid connectivity throughput requirements

The requirement specifies a dedicated 10 Gbps private connection from on-premises labs to GCP.

HA VPN throughput is capped at 3 Gbps per tunnel, whereas Dedicated Interconnect natively supports 10 Gbps and 100 Gbps circuits with high availability SLA options.

Key Concept

Designing high-availability cloud infrastructure requires selecting compute, database, and network services that match specific RTO, SLA, and throughput constraints without over-engineering.

Question 1320Question →

A digital streaming platform requires a database solution to ingest and query high-throughput user clickstream events in real time. The workload generates millions of event writes per second with sub-10 millisecond latency requirements, storing key-value pairs indexed by user ID and timestamp. The data does not require multi-table relational joins or ACID transactions across multiple keys. Which database service should you select to meet these technical requirements while minimizing operational complexity and cost?

Provision Cloud Bigtable to handle high-throughput NoSQL key-value writes with consistent low latency.

Provision Cloud Spanner to manage the clickstream data within a globally distributed relational database architecture.

Export real-time event logs to local disk and order GCP Transfer Appliance units to regularly transport physical media to Cloud Storage.

Provision a single Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL instance with public IP endpoints and rely exclusively on IAM roles to prevent data exfiltration.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: Provision Cloud Bigtable to handle high-throughput NoSQL key-value writes with consistent low latency.

Answer

Provision Cloud Bigtable to handle high-throughput NoSQL key-value writes with consistent low latency.

Cloud Bigtable is purpose-built for high-throughput, low-latency write workloads like real-time analytics, time-series data, and clickstream events indexed by row keys. It provides scalable NoSQL storage without the overhead of relational database management.

Step-by-Step Solution

Analyze access pattern and throughput requirements

The workload requires high-throughput (millions of events per second), low latency (sub-10ms), and simple key-value lookups without relational transactions.

Matching database capabilities to workload write volume and query requirements is critical for performance and cost management.

Evaluate candidate Google Cloud database services

Cloud Bigtable provides seamless scaling for heavy write workloads and time-series key-value access patterns.

Bigtable handles massive NoSQL workloads significantly better than relational engines like Cloud SQL or Spanner when complex relational features are unneeded.

Key Concept

Selecting GCP Storage Services Based on Access Patterns and Scalability Requirements

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