📐 Designing and Planning a Cloud Solution Architecture - PCA Practice Questions

Design cloud architectures considering business requirements, technical requirements, and Google Cloud best practices.

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PCA Designing & Planning Question Bank (11 Questions)

Browse all 11 practice questions covering Designing and Planning a Cloud Solution Architecture for the PCA certification exam. Answers are intentionally hidden on this page so you can self-test first before checking results in quiz mode.

  1. Question 1Designing and Planning a Cloud Solution Architecture

    A company wants to migrate a monolithic e-commerce application to Google Cloud. They need 99.99% availability and sub-second latency globally. What architecture should you recommend?

    ASingle-region Compute Engine VMs
    BMicroservices on GKE Autopilot with multi-region deployment, Cloud Spanner for global consistency, global HTTPS load balancer, and Cloud CDN
    CApp Engine Standard in one region
    DCloud Functions for all services

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  2. Question 2Designing and Planning a Cloud Solution Architecture

    A company wants to avoid vendor lock-in and run workloads on both Google Cloud and AWS. What architecture approach should you recommend?

    ABuild separate architectures for each cloud
    BUse Anthos for consistent Kubernetes management across clouds, Terraform for multi-cloud IaC, and open standards (gRPC, OpenTelemetry, Kubernetes) for portability
    CUse only serverless on both clouds
    DUse VPN between the clouds

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  3. Question 3Designing and Planning a Cloud Solution Architecture

    A company processes 500GB of new data daily from IoT devices and needs real-time analytics plus historical analysis. What data architecture should you design?

    AStore everything in Cloud SQL
    BIoT Core → Pub/Sub → Dataflow (real-time processing) → BigQuery (analytics warehouse) + Cloud Storage (raw data lake), with Looker for dashboards
    CStore in Compute Engine local disks
    DUse only Cloud Functions

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  4. Question 4Designing and Planning a Cloud Solution Architecture

    You are designing a public API that needs to handle millions of requests per day. What architecture ensures scalability and reliability?

    ASingle Compute Engine VM
    BApigee for API management + Cloud Run as backend (auto-scales) + Cloud CDN for cacheable responses + Cloud Armor for security + Pub/Sub for async processing
    CApp Engine Standard only
    DCloud Functions for everything

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  5. Question 5Designing for Security and Compliance

    How should you design centralized logging for a multi-project organization?

    ACheck logs in each project separately
    BCreate organization-level log sinks to export all audit logs to a dedicated security project with BigQuery for analysis and Chronicle SIEM for threat detection
    CDisable logging to save costs
    DOnly log errors

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  6. Question 6Designing and Planning a Cloud Solution Architecture

    A company wants to build a recommendation engine using their proprietary data. What Google Cloud architecture should you design?

    ABuild from scratch on VMs
    BVertex AI: Feature Store for feature management, custom training with GPUs, Model Registry for versioning, online/batch prediction endpoints, and Vertex AI Pipelines for ML ops
    CUse BigQuery only
    DUse Cloud Functions for ML

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  7. Question 7Designing and Planning a Cloud Solution Architecture

    A legacy system processes orders synchronously, causing timeout errors during peak times. How do you redesign it for reliability?

    AAdd bigger servers
    BDecouple with Pub/Sub: accept orders synchronously (fast acknowledgment), publish to Pub/Sub for async processing, with Cloud Tasks for reliable delivery and dead-letter queues for failures
    CAdd a CDN
    DMove to a faster database

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  8. Question 8Designing for Security and Compliance

    You are designing a zero-trust security architecture for a company migrating to Google Cloud. Which components should you include?

    ATraditional VPN for all access
    BBeyondCorp Enterprise (IAP for app access), Workload Identity (GKE authentication), Cloud Armor (WAF), VPC Service Controls (data perimeter), and continuous verification
    COnly firewall rules
    DOnly encryption

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  9. Question 9Designing and Planning a Cloud Solution Architecture

    You are designing a microservices architecture where services need to communicate asynchronously. What pattern should you use?

    ADirect HTTP calls between all services
    BEvent-driven architecture using Pub/Sub for async communication, with Eventarc for routing events to Cloud Run services and Workflows for orchestration
    CShared database for all services
    DFTP file transfers

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  10. Question 10Designing and Planning a Cloud Solution Architecture

    You need to design an image processing pipeline: when a user uploads an image to Cloud Storage, it should be resized, stored, and the user notified. What architecture should you use?

    AA cron job checking for new files
    BCloud Storage event → Eventarc → Cloud Run job (resize image) → store result in Cloud Storage → Pub/Sub notification → Cloud Functions (send email/push notification)
    CManual processing
    DCompute Engine polling Cloud Storage

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  11. Question 11Managing Implementation

    What documentation should accompany a cloud architecture design?

    AOnly diagrams
    BArchitecture Decision Records (ADRs), architecture diagrams (logical + deployment), runbooks, DR plan, security design document, cost estimates, and SLO definitions
    COnly a README file
    DNo documentation needed

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Key Designing & Planning Concepts for PCA

architecturedesignplanningrequirementsmigrationhybrid cloudmulti-cloud

PCA Designing & Planning Exam Tips

Designing and Planning a Cloud Solution Architecture questions in PCA are typically scenario-based. Focus on designing reliable, secure, and cost-effective solutions on Google Cloud. Priority concepts: architecture, design, planning, requirements, migration, hybrid cloud.

What PCA Expects

  • Anchor your answer in choose architectures that balance reliability, security, and cost for the given business requirements.
  • Designing & Planning scenarios for PCA are frequently mapped to Domain 1 (~25%), so read the objective carefully before picking controls or architecture.
  • Expect multi-topic scenarios where Designing & Planning interacts with IAM, networking, data, or operations patterns rather than appearing as an isolated question.
  • When two options are both technically valid, prefer the choice that best aligns with the exam's operational scope (Professional) and vendor best practices.

High-Value Designing & Planning Concepts

  • Know the core Designing & Planning building blocks cold: architecture, design, planning, requirements.
  • Review the edge-case features and limits for migration, hybrid cloud; these details are commonly used to differentiate answer choices.
  • Practice service-integration reasoning: how Designing & Planning pairs with Managing & Provisioning, Security & Compliance in real deployment patterns.
  • For PCA, explain why the chosen Designing & Planning design meets reliability, security, and cost expectations better than the alternatives.

Common PCA Traps

  • Watch for selecting the most feature-rich option when a simpler managed service suffices.
  • Questions in Designing and Planning often include distractors that look correct for Designing & Planning but violate least-privilege, reliability, or scalability requirements.
  • Avoid picking options purely by feature name; validate data path, failure handling, and governance impact before answering.
  • If the prompt hints at automation or repeatability, eliminate manual-only operational answers first.

Fast Review Checklist

  • Can you compare at least two Designing & Planning implementation paths and justify which one best fits the scenario?
  • Can you map the chosen answer back to Designing and Planning (~25%) outcomes for PCA?
  • Can you explain security and access boundaries for Designing & Planning without relying on default-open assumptions?
  • Can you describe how Designing & Planning integrates with Managing & Provisioning and Security & Compliance during failure, scaling, and monitoring events?

Exam Domains Covering Designing & Planning

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