PROFESSIONAL-CLOUD-DEVOPS-ENGINEER Question #31: Real Exam Question with Answer & Explanation

Question

You manage several production systems that run on Compute Engine in the same Google Cloud Platform (GCP) project. Each system has its own set of dedicated Compute Engine instances. You want to know how must it costs to run each of the systems. What should you do?

Options

• AIn the Google Cloud Platform Console, use the Cost Breakdown section to visualize the costs per
• BAssign all instances a label specific to the system they run. Configure BigQuery billing export and
• CEnrich all instances with metadata specific to the system they run. Configure Stackdriver Logging
• DName each virtual machine (VM) after the system it runs. Set up a usage report export to a Cloud

Explanation

GCP labels are the standard mechanism for attributing costs to logical groupings of resources within a project. By applying a system-specific label (e.g., system=payments) to each Compute Engine instance, those labels are included in the billing export data. Exporting billing data to BigQuery enables powerful SQL queries to break down costs by label, giving per-system cost visibility. Option A (Cost Breakdown in Console) provides high-level summaries but does not support custom label-based filtering at the granularity needed. Option C uses Stackdriver metadata for logging and monitoring - not billing attribution. Option D relies on VM naming conventions, which are not captured by the billing export system and cannot be queried reliably. Labels + BigQuery billing export is the purpose-built GCP solution for this use case.

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