1.5 Envisioning Future Solution Improvements PROFESSIONAL-CLOUD-ARCHITECT Practice Questions (Page 1)

Questions 1–5

1. 1application · medium

   A healthcare company runs a nightly ETL pipeline that processes 2 TB of patient data. The pipeline currently runs on a Dataproc cluster that is manually started and stopped. The company wants to reduce costs and improve scalability for future data growth. What should the company do?

   • AMigrate the ETL pipeline to Dataflow with a streaming pipeline that processes data continuously.
   • BUse Dataproc on GKE with autoscaling and a scheduled workflow to start and stop the cluster.
   • CKeep the manual Dataproc cluster but use preemptible VMs for all worker nodes.
   • DIncrease the Dataproc cluster's master node size to handle larger data volumes.
   Reveal Solution Discussion Select an answer first
2. 2expert · hard

   A company is designing a new customer-facing application. The business expects to launch in one region initially but plans to expand globally within two years. The application will have a relational database with strong consistency requirements. The team wants to avoid a major re-architecture during the global expansion. What database choice best supports this future requirement?

   • AUse Cloud Spanner from the start, even though the initial deployment is in a single region.
   • BUse Cloud Firestore, which scales globally and provides strong consistency.
   • CUse Cloud SQL for MySQL initially and migrate to Cloud Spanner when expanding globally.
   • DUse a single Cloud SQL instance with a large machine type and add read replicas as needed.
   Reveal Solution Discussion Select an answer first
4. 3expert · hard

   A company runs a data-processing workload on a fixed cluster of Compute Engine VMs. The workload is batch-oriented and runs for several hours each day. The company wants to reduce costs but is concerned about the reliability of preemptible VMs for this workload. What is the best approach to balance cost and reliability?

   • AUse only preemptible VMs and configure the workload to restart from checkpoints on failure.
   • BUse a mix of standard and preemptible VMs in the cluster, with the standard VMs handling the critical portion of the workload.
   • CUse only standard VMs and negotiate a committed use discount.
   • DMigrate the workload to Dataflow and use flexible resource scheduling.
   Reveal Solution Discussion Select an answer first
5. 4application · medium

   A financial services firm is migrating a customer-facing web application from an on-premises data center to Google Cloud. The current architecture uses a load balancer, a set of stateless web servers, and a MySQL database. The firm wants to minimize operational overhead and take advantage of cloud-native services. What should the firm use for the database tier?

   • ACloud Spanner for global scalability and strong consistency.
   • BBigtable for high-throughput NoSQL workloads.
   • CCloud SQL for MySQL with high availability and automated backups.
   • DA Compute Engine VM with MySQL installed and a startup script that installs and configures the database.
   Reveal Solution Discussion Select an answer first
6. 5foundation · easy

   A company is designing a new application and wants to apply a cloud-first mindset. Which decision is most aligned with this principle?

   • AUsing a self-managed open-source database on a VM
   • BDesigning the application to run only on-premises
   • CBuilding the application on a single VM to minimize complexity
   • DUsing Cloud Functions for a lightweight event-driven component
   Reveal Solution Discussion Select an answer first