access controlsManaged services, preemptible machines, autoscalingNoSQL databases, preemptible machines, autoscalingNoSQL databases, preemptible machines, access controls3 Some executives are questioning your recommendation to employ continuous integration/continuous delivery (CI/CD). What reasons would you give to justify your recommendation?CI/CD supports small releases, which are easier to debug and enable faster feedback.CI/CD is used only with preemptible machines and therefore saves money.CI/CD fits well with waterfall methodology but not agile methodologies.CI/CD limits the number of times code is released.
4 The finance director has asked your advice about complying with a document retention regulation. What kind of service-level objective (SLO) would you recommend to ensure that the finance director will be able to retrieve sensitive documents for at least the next seven years? When a document is needed, the finance director will have up to seven days to retrieve it. The total storage required will be approximately 100 TB.High availability SLODurability SLOReliability SLOScalability SLO
5 You are facilitating a meeting of business and technical managers to solicit requirements for a cloud migration project. The term incident comes up several times. Some of the business managers are unfamiliar with this term in the context of IT. How would you describe an incident?A disruption in the ability of a DevOps team to complete work on timeA disruption in the ability of the business managers to approve a project plan on schedule A disruption that causes a service to be degraded or unavailableA personnel problem on the DevOps team
6 You have been asked to consult on a cloud migration project that includes moving private medical information to a storage system in the cloud. The project is for a company in the United States. What regulation would you suggest that the team review during the requirements-gathering stages?General Data Protection Regulations (GDPR)Sarbanes–Oxley (SOX)Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS)Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA)
7 You are in the early stages of gathering business and technical requirements. You have noticed several references about needing up-to-date and consistent information regarding product inventory and support for SQL reporting tools. Inventory is managed on a global scale, and the warehouses storing inventory are located in North America, Africa, Europe, and Asia. Which managed database solution in Google Cloud would you include in your set of options for an inventory database?Cloud StorageBigQueryCloud SpannerMicrosoft SQL Server
8 A developer at Mountkirk Games is interested in how architects decide which database to use. The developer describes a use case that requires a document store. The developer would rather not manage database servers or have to run backups. What managed service would you suggest the developer consider?Cloud FirestoreCloud SpannerCloud StorageBigQuery
9 Members of your company's legal team are concerned about using a public cloud service because other companies, organizations, and individuals will be running their systems in the same cloud. You assure them that your company's resources will be isolated and not network-accessible to others because of what networking resource in Google Cloud?CIDR blocksDirect connectionsVirtual private cloudsCloud Pub/Sub
10 A startup has recently migrated to Google Cloud using a lift-and-shift migration. They are now considering replacing a self-managed MySQL database running in Compute Engine with a managed service. Which Google Cloud service would you recommend that they consider?Cloud DataprocCloud DataflowCloud SQLPostgreSQL
11 Which of the following requirements from a customer make you think the application should run in Compute Engine and not App Engine?Dynamically scale up or down based on workloadConnect to a databaseRun a hardened Linux distro on a virtual machineDon't lose data
12 Mountkirk Games wants to store player game data in a time-series database. Which Google Cloud managed database would you recommend?BigtableBigQueryCloud StorageCloud Dataproc
13 The original video captured during helicopter races by the Helicopter Racing League are transcoded and stored for frequent access. The original captured videos are not used for viewing but are stored in case they are needed for unanticipated reasons. The files require high durability but are not likely to be accessed more than once in a five-year period. What type of storage would you use for the original video files?BigQuery Long Term StorageBigQuery Active StorageCloud Storage Nearline classCloud Storage Archive class
14 The game analytics platform for Mountkirk Games requires analysts to be able to query up to 10 TB of data. What is the best managed database solution for this requirement?Cloud SpannerBigQueryCloud StorageCloud Dataprep
15 EHR Healthcare business requirements frequently discuss the need to improve observability in their systems. Which of the following Google Cloud Platform services could be used to help improve observability?Cloud Build and Artifact RegistryCloud Pub/Sub and Cloud DataflowCloud Monitoring and Cloud LoggingCloud Storage and Cloud Pub/Sub
Chapter 2 Designing Solutions to Meet Business Requirements
THE PROFESSIONAL CLOUD ARCHITECT CERTIFICATION EXAM OBJECTIVES COVERED IN THIS CHAPTER INCLUDE THE FOLLOWING:
1.1 Designing a solution infrastructure that meets business requirements
1.2 Designing a solution infrastructure that meets technical requirements
1.5 Envisioning future solution improvements
One of the things that distinguishes a cloud architect from a cloud engineer is the architect's need to work with business requirements. Architects work with colleagues responsible for business strategy, planning, development, and operations. Before architects can begin to design solutions, they need to understand their organization's cloud vision and objectives that the business is trying to achieve. These objectives frame the possible solutions that are acceptable to the business.
When it comes to the Professional Cloud Architect exam, business requirements are pieces of information that will help you determine the most appropriate answer to some of the questions. It is important to remember that questions on the exam may have more than one answer that appears correct, but only one answer is the best solution to the problem posed. For example, a question may be asked about a small business application that needs to store data in a relational database, and the database will be accessed by only a few users in a single office. You could use the globally scalable relational database Cloud Spanner to solve this problem, but Cloud SQL would be a better fit to the requirements and cost less. If you come across a question that seems to have more than one answer, consider all the technical and business requirements. You may find that more than one option meets the technical or the business requirements, but only one option meets both.
This chapter reviews several key areas where business requirements are important to understand, including the following:
Business use cases and product strategy
Application design and cost considerations
Systems integration and data management
Compliance and regulations
Security
Success measures
Throughout the chapter, I will reference the case studies used in the Google Professional Cloud Architect exam.
Business Use Cases and Product Strategy
Business
