PROFESSIONAL-CLOUD-DEVOPS-ENGINEER Question #149: Real Exam Question with Answer & Explanation

Question

You have a Compute Engine instance that uses the default Debian image. The application hosted on this instance recently suffered a series of crashes that you weren't able to debug in real time: the application process died suddenly every time. The application usually consumes 50% of the instance's memory, and normally never more than 70%, but you suspect that a memory leak was responsible for the crashes. You want to validate this hypothesis. What should you do?

Options

• AGo to Stackdriver's Metric Explorer and look for the
• BIn Stackdriver, create an uptime check for your application. Create an alert policy for that uptime
• CInstall the Stackdriver Monitoring agent on the instance. Go to Stackdriver's Metric Explorer and
• DInstall the Stackdriver Monitoring agent on the instance. Create an alert policy on the

Explanation

The default Debian image does not include the Stackdriver (Ops) Monitoring agent, so memory metrics are not collected by default. Installing the agent enables detailed memory utilization metrics. Creating an alert policy on memory utilization (e.g., trigger when usage exceeds 80–90%) allows you to capture evidence during the next memory leak event, validating the hypothesis. Option A is incomplete because without the agent, memory metrics won't be available in Metric Explorer. Option B (uptime check) only detects process availability, not memory growth. Option C installs the agent and uses Metric Explorer but lacks an alert policy to catch the event proactively when it happens again.

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