Google Professional Cloud Database Engineer Question 168
Select 2Google Cloud PlatformYour team is managing a relational database on Google Cloud SQL that is experiencing performance degradation during peak traffic times. You need to determine the best scaling strategy to handle the traffic surge while minimizing downtime and cost. Which of the following are valid options for scaling the database to address these concerns?
- A
Increase the CPU and memory settings of the Cloud SQL instance to handle higher loads.
- B
Enable read replicas to distribute read traffic across multiple instances.
- C
Set up a sharded database architecture to horizontally distribute traffic across multiple databases.
- D
Upgrade the Cloud SQL instance to a higher tier without modifying the CPU and memory settings.
- E
Enable high availability (HA) to automatically scale up the database during high traffic.
Show answer and explanation
Correct answers: A, B
Explanation
To address the performance degradation during peak traffic, you can either scale up (by increasing the instance's CPU and memory) or scale out (by distributing workloads using read replicas). These approaches align with common practices for managing traffic surges in Google Cloud SQL. Sharding and high availability are not directly applicable to this scenario since they either require significant architectural changes (sharding) or do not provide scaling functionality (HA).
- A. Correct.
Increasing CPU and memory settings is a valid example of scaling up, which can improve performance for higher loads. However, this approach might require planned downtime.
- B. Correct.
Enabling read replicas is a valid example of scaling out, as it distributes read traffic across multiple instances without affecting the primary database's write operations.
- C. Incorrect.
Setting up a sharded architecture is a complex horizontal scaling strategy, but it is not natively supported by Cloud SQL. It requires significant application-level changes and doesn’t minimize downtime.
- D. Incorrect.
Upgrading to a higher tier without modifying CPU and memory settings does not directly address performance issues, as the tier upgrade alone might not increase the instance's resources.
- E. Incorrect.
Enabling high availability (HA) ensures database redundancy and failover but does not provide autoscaling capabilities or performance enhancements for peak traffic.