Cloud Native Observability GCSA Practice Questions (Page 4)

Questions 16–20

1. 16application · medium

   An e-commerce application is experiencing intermittent checkout failures. The team has access to metrics showing the error rate, logs showing error messages, and traces showing the request path. They notice that the error rate spikes every few minutes, but logs do not show a consistent error. Which telemetry type is most likely to reveal the root cause?

   • ATraces, because they show the full request path and can reveal which service or dependency is slow or failing intermittently.
   • BMetrics, because they can be aggregated to show the overall error rate trend.
   • CKubernetes events, because they show when pods are restarted.
   • DLogs, because they contain the exact error messages.
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2. 17foundation · easy

   Why is distributed tracing considered a best practice for designing observable cloud native systems?

   • AIt reduces the number of logs generated by the system.
   • BIt eliminates the need for metrics.
   • CIt automatically scales the application based on traffic.
   • DIt provides end-to-end visibility into request flows across services, which is critical for debugging distributed systems.
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4. 18foundation · easy

   Which statement best describes the goal of cloud native observability?

   • ATo replace all manual debugging with automated root cause analysis.
   • BTo collect as much data as possible and store it indefinitely for compliance.
   • CTo ensure that all cloud resources are monitored using a single vendor tool.
   • DTo provide the ability to understand and debug complex, distributed systems by correlating telemetry data.
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5. 19foundation · easy

   What is the primary conceptual difference between observability and monitoring?

   • AMonitoring is only for infrastructure, while observability is only for applications.
   • BMonitoring focuses on known failure modes, while observability enables exploration of unknown failure modes.
   • CObservability requires machine learning, while monitoring does not.
   • DMonitoring is reactive, while observability is proactive.
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6. 20application · medium

   A company is using multiple observability backends: one for metrics, one for logs, and one for traces. They want to standardize on OpenTelemetry to send data to all backends. What is the recommended way to configure the OpenTelemetry Collector?

   • AConfigure the Collector with multiple pipelines, each using the appropriate receiver and exporter for the target backend.
   • BRun a separate Collector instance for each backend and manually configure each service to send to the correct instance.
   • CInstall the OpenTelemetry SDK in each backend to receive data directly from applications.
   • DUse the Collector only as a proxy and configure each backend to pull data directly from the applications.
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