PROFESSIONAL-CLOUD-ARCHITECT Question #7: Real Exam Question with Answer & Explanation

Question

Your marketing department wants to send out a promotional email campaign. The development team wants to minimize direct operation management. They project a wide range of possible customer responses, from 100 to 500,000 click-through per day. The link leads to a simple website that explains the promotion and collects user information and preferences. Which infrastructure should you recommend? Choose 2 answers.

Options

• AUse Google App Engine to serve the website and Google Cloud Datastore to store user data.
• BUse a Google Container Engine cluster to serve the website and store data to persistent disk.
• CUse a managed instance group to serve the website and Google Cloud Bigtable to store user
• DUse a single compute Engine virtual machine (VM) to host a web server, backed by Google Cloud

Explanation

A (App Engine + Datastore) and C (Managed Instance Group + Bigtable) both satisfy the two critical constraints: auto-scaling across the extreme traffic range (100–500,000 requests/day) and minimizing operational management. App Engine is a fully managed PaaS that scales automatically with zero infrastructure configuration, while Datastore is a serverless NoSQL database requiring no DBA work. Managed instance groups similarly handle auto-scaling for compute, and Bigtable is a fully managed, high-throughput database built to absorb massive spike workloads.

B is wrong because Google Container Engine (GKE) requires cluster node management and operational overhead, and persistent disk is block storage - not a database - making it unsuitable for storing user data at scale. D is wrong because a single Compute Engine VM cannot scale at all; it becomes a bottleneck and single point of failure when traffic spikes to 500,000 requests, and it requires the most hands-on management of any option.

Memory tip: When an exam question says "minimize management" + "unpredictable/wide traffic range," mentally filter to fully managed and auto-scaling services - App Engine and managed instance groups pass that filter, while bare VMs and manually managed clusters fail it immediately.

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