Google Associate Cloud Engineer Exam Practice Test Instant Access

Question 1

You have an application that is currently processing transactions by using a group of managed VM instances. You need to migrate the application so that it is serverless and scalable. You want to implement an asynchronous transaction processing system, while minimizing management overhead. What should you do?

AInstall Kafka on VM instances to acknowledge incoming transactions. Use Cloud Run to process transactions.

BInstall Kafka on VM Instances to acknowledge incoming transactions. Use VM Instances to process transactions.

CUse Pub/Sub to acknowledge incoming transactions. Use VM instances to process transactions.

DUse Pub/Sub to acknowledge incoming transactions. Use Cloud Run to process transactions.

Answer : D

The goal is to create a serverless, scalable, and asynchronous transaction processing system with minimal management overhead.

Serverless Requirement:Options involving installing Kafka on VMs (A, B) or using VM instances for processing (B, C) introduce management overhead associated with VMs (patching, scaling configuration, OS management) and Kafka cluster management, violating the serverless and minimal management criteria.

Asynchronous Requirement:Both Kafka and Pub/Sub can handle asynchronous messaging. However, Pub/Sub is Google Cloud's fully managed, serverless messaging service, inherently minimizing management overhead compared to self-managed Kafka on VMs.

Scalability and Processing:Cloud Run is a fully managed, serverless platform that automatically scales based on traffic, suitable for processing transactions without managing underlying infrastructure. VM instances require manual scaling configuration or managed instance groups, adding overhead.

Combining Pub/Sub for asynchronous message ingestion (fully managed, serverless) and Cloud Run for processing (fully managed, serverless, scalable) directly meets all requirements: serverless, scalable, asynchronous, and minimal management overhead. Option D is the only one that uses fully serverless components for both ingestion and processing.

Google Cloud Pub/Sub Overview: 'Pub/Sub is an asynchronous and scalable messaging service...' -https://cloud.google.com/pubsub/docs/overview

Google Cloud Run Overview: 'Cloud Run is a managed compute platform that lets you run containers directly on top of Google's scalable infrastructure.' -https://cloud.google.com/run/docs/overview/what-is-cloud-run

Question 2

Your coworker has helped you set up several configurations for gcloud. You've noticed that you're running commands against the wrong project. Being new to the company, you haven't yet memorized any of the projects. With the fewest steps possible, what's the fastest way to switch to the correct configuration?

ARun gcloud configurations list followed by gcloud configurations activate .

BRun gcloud config list followed by gcloud config activate.

CRun gcloud config configurations list followed by gcloud config configurations activate.

DRe-authenticate with the gcloud auth login command and select the correct configurations on login.

Answer : C

as gcloud config configurations list can help check for the existing configurations and activate can help switch to the configuration.

gcloud config configurations list lists existing named configurations

gcloud config configurations activate activates an existing named configuration

Obtains access credentials for your user account via a web-based authorization flow. When this command completes successfully, it sets the active account in the current configuration to the account specified. If no configuration exists, it creates a configuration named default.

Question 3

Your company is using Google Workspace to manage employee accounts. Anticipated growth will increase the number of personnel from 100 employees to 1.000 employees within 2 years. Most employees will need access to your company's Google Cloud account. The systems and processes will need to support 10x growth without performance degradation, unnecessary complexity, or security issues. What should you do?

AMigrate the users to Active Directory. Connect the Human Resources system to Active Directory. Turn on Google Cloud Directory Sync (GCDS) for Cloud Identity. Turn on Identity Federation from Cloud Identity to Active Directory.

BOrganize the users in Cloud Identity into groups. Enforce multi-factor authentication in Cloud Identity.

CTurn on identity federation between Cloud Identity and Google Workspace. Enforce multi-factor authentication for domain wide delegation.

DUse a third-party identity provider service through federation. Synchronize the users from Google Workplace to the third-party provider in real time.

Answer : B

Question 4

You have 32 GB of data in a single file that you need to upload to a Nearline Storage bucket. The WAN connection you are using is rated at 1 Gbps, and you are the only one on the connection. You want to use as much of the rated 1 Gbps as possible to transfer the file rapidly. How should you upload the file?

AUse the GCP Console to transfer the file instead of gsutil.

BEnable parallel composite uploads using gsutil on the file transfer.

CDecrease the TCP window size on the machine initiating the transfer.

DChange the storage class of the bucket from Nearline to Multi-Regional.

Answer : B

https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/parallel-composite-uploads

https://cloud.google.com/storage/docs/uploads-downloads#parallel-composite-uploads

Question 5

(You are managing an application deployed on Cloud Run. The development team has released a new version of the application. You want to deploy and redirect traffic to this new version of the application. To ensure traffic to the new version of the application is served with no startup time, you want to ensure that there are two idle instances available for incoming traffic before adjusting the traffic flow. You also want to minimize administrative overhead. What should you do?)

AEnsure the checkbox 'Serve this revision immediately' is unchecked when deploying the new revision. Before changing the traffic rules, use a traffic simulation tool to send load to the new revision.

BConfigure service autoscaling and set the minimum number of instances to 2.

CConfigure revision autoscaling for the new revision and set the minimum number of instances to 2.

DConfigure revision autoscaling for the existing revision and set the minimum number of instances to 2.

Answer : C

Let's analyze each option to find the one that meets the requirements of no startup time for new traffic, two idle instances, and minimal administrative overhead:

A . Unchecking 'Serve this revision immediately' and using a traffic simulation tool: Unchecking 'Serve this revision immediately' does prevent the new revision from receiving traffic immediately. However, manually using a traffic simulation tool adds administrative overhead. It also doesn't guarantee that two idle instances will be ready before traffic is shifted; you would need to monitor and adjust traffic manually based on the simulation.

B . Configuring service autoscaling and setting the minimum number of instances to 2: Service-level autoscaling applies to all revisions of the service. Setting the minimum instances at the service level would ensure at least two instances are running across all active revisions, not specifically for the new revision before traffic shift.

C . Configuring revision autoscaling for the new revision and setting the minimum number of instances to 2: This is the correct approach. By configuring revision autoscaling specifically for the new revision and setting the minimum number of instances to 2, Cloud Run will ensure that at least two instances of the new version are running and ready to serve traffic before you redirect any traffic to it. This eliminates startup latency when you do shift traffic. It also minimizes administrative overhead as Cloud Run manages the instance scaling based on this configuration.

D . Configuring revision autoscaling for the existing revision and setting the minimum number of instances to 2: This would ensure the existing version has at least two idle instances, which doesn't directly address the requirement of having idle instances ready for the new version before traffic redirection.

Google Cloud Documentation Reference:

Cloud Run Autoscaling: https://cloud.google.com/run/docs/configuring/min-instances - This document explains how to configure minimum and maximum instances for Cloud Run services and revisions. It clarifies that you can set minimum instances at the revision level to ensure instances are always ready.

Cloud Run Traffic Management: https://cloud.google.com/run/docs/managing/traffic - This describes how to deploy new revisions and gradually shift traffic between them. Combining minimum instances on the new revision with traffic splitting allows for zero-downtime deployments with pre-warmed instances.

Question 6

Your company is moving from an on-premises environment to Google Cloud Platform (GCP). You have multiple development teams that use Cassandra environments as backend databases. They all need a development environment that is isolated from other Cassandra instances. You want to move to GCP quickly and with minimal support effort. What should you do?

A1. Build an instruction guide to install Cassandra on GCP.
2. Make the instruction guide accessible to your developers.

B1. Advise your developers to go to Cloud Marketplace.
2. Ask the developers to launch a Cassandra image for their development work.

C1. Build a Cassandra Compute Engine instance and take a snapshot of it.
2. Use the snapshot to create instances for your developers.

D1. Build a Cassandra Compute Engine instance and take a snapshot of it.
2. Upload the snapshot to Cloud Storage and make it accessible to your developers.
3. Build instructions to create a Compute Engine instance from the snapshot so that developers can do it themselves.

Answer : B

https://medium.com/google-cloud/how-to-deploy-cassandra-and-connect-on-google-cloud-platform-with-a-few-clicks-11ee3d7001d1

https://cloud.google.com/blog/products/databases/open-source-cassandra-now-managed-on-google-cloud

https://cloud.google.com/marketplace

You can deploy Cassandra as a Service, called Astra, on the Google Cloud Marketplace. Not only do you get a unified bill for all GCP services, your Developers can now create Cassandra clusters on Google Cloud in minutes and build applications with Cassandra as a database as a service without the operational overhead of managing Cassandra

Question 7

You need to configure optimal data storage for files stored in Cloud Storage for minimal cost. The files are used in a mission-critical analytics pipeline that is used continually. The users are in Boston, MA (United States). What should you do?

AConfigure regional storage for the region closest to the users Configure a Nearline storage class

BConfigure regional storage for the region closest to the users Configure a Standard storage class

CConfigure dual-regional storage for the dual region closest to the users Configure a Nearline storage class

DConfigure dual-regional storage for the dual region closest to the users Configure a Standard storage class

Answer : B

Keywords: - continually -> Standard - mission-critical analytics -> dual-regional