PCA Sample Questions & Answers

Company Overview

JencoMart is a global retailer with over 10,000 stores in 16 countries. The stores carry a range of goods, such as groceries, tires, and jewelry. One of the company’s core values is excellent customer service. In addition, they recently introduced an environmental policy to reduce their carbon output by 50% over the next 5 years.

Company Background

JencoMart started as a general store in 1931, and has grown into one of the world’s leading brands, known for great value and customer service. Over time, the company transitioned from only physical stores to a stores and online hybrid model, with 25% of sales online. Currently, JencoMart has little presence in Asia, but considers that market key for future growth.

Solution Concept

JencoMart wants to migrate several critical applications to the cloud but has not completed a technical review to determine their suitability for the cloud and the engineering required for migration. They currently host all of these applications on infrastructure that is at its end of life and is no longer supported.

Existing Technical Environment

JencoMart hosts all of its applications in 4 data centers: 3 in North American and 1 in Europe; most applications are dual-homed.

JencoMart understands the dependencies and resource usage metrics of their on-premises architecture.
Application: Customer loyalty portal

LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP) application served from the two JencoMart-owned U.S. data centers.

Database

Oracle Database stores user profiles PostgreSQL database stores user credentials
Single-homed in US West No redundancy
Backed up every 12 hours

100% uptime service level agreement (SLA) Authenticates all users

Compute

30 machines in US West Coast, each machine has: 20 machines in US East Coast, each machine has:
Single, dual-core CPU 24 GB of RAM
Twin 250 GB HDD (RAID 1)

Storage

Access to shared 100 TB SAN in each location Tape backup every week

Business Requirements

Optimize for capacity during peak periods and value during off-peak periods Guarantee service availability and support
Reduce on-premises footprint and associated financial and environmental impact

Move to outsourcing model to avoid large upfront costs associated with infrastructure purchase
Expand services into Asia

Technical Requirements

Assess key application for cloud suitability Modify applications for the cloud
Move applications to a new infrastructure Leverage managed services wherever feasible Sunset 20% of capacity in existing data centers Decrease latency in Asia

CEO Statement

JencoMart will continue to develop personal relationships with our customers as more people access the web. The future of our retail business is in the global market and the connection between online and in-store experiences. As a large, global company, we also have a responsibility to the environment through “green” initiatives and policies.

CTO Statement

The challenges of operating data centers prevent focus on key technologies critical to our long- term success. Migrating our data services to a public cloud infrastructure will allow us to focus on big data and machine learning to improve our service to customers.

CFO Statement

Since its founding, JencoMart has invested heavily in our data services infrastructure. However, because of changing market trends, we need to outsource our infrastructure to ensure our long- term success. This model will allow us to respond to increasing customer demand during peak periods and reduce costs.

JencoMart wants to move their User Profiles database to Google Cloud Platform. Which Google Database should they use?

Company Overview

Planet Games makes online, session-based, multiplayer games for the most popular mobile platforms. They build all of their games using some server-side integration. Historically, they have used cloud providers to lease physical servers.

Due to the unexpected popularity of some of their games, they have had problems scaling their global audience, application servers MySQL databases, and analytics tools.

Their current model is to write game statistics to files and send them through an ETL tool that loads them into a centralized MySQL database for reporting.

Solution Concept

Planet Games is building a new game, which they expect to be very popular. They plan to deploy the game’s backend on Google Compute Engine so they can capture streaming metrics run intensive analytics, and take advantage of its autoscaling server environment and integrate with a managed NoSQL database.

Business Requirements

Increase to a global footprint

Improve uptime - downtime is loss of players Increase efficiency of the clous resources we use Reduce lateny to all customers

Technical Requirements

Requirements for Game Backend Platform

Dynamically scale up or down based on game activity Connect to a managed NoSQL database service
Run customize Linux distro

Requirements for Game Analytics Platform Dynamically scale up or down based on game activity
Process incoming data on the fly directly from the game servers Process data that arrives late because of slow mobile networks Allow SQL queries to access at least 10 TB of historical data Process files that are regularly uploaded by users’ mobile devices Use only fully managed services

CEO Statement

Our last successful game did not scale well with our previous cloud provider, resulting in lower user adoption and affecting the game’s reputation. Our investors want more key performance indicators (KPIs) to evaluate the speed and stability of the game, as well as other metrics that provide deeper insight into usage patterns so we can adapt the game to target users.

CTO Statement

Our current technology stack cannot provide the scale we need, so we want to replace MySQL and move to an environment that provides autoscaling, low latency load balancing, and frees us up from managing physical servers.

CFO Statement

We are not capturing enough user demographic data, usage metrics, and other KPIs. As a result, we do not engage the right users, we are not confident that our marketing is targeting the right users, and we are not selling enough premium Blast-Ups inside the games, which dramatically impacts our revenue.

Planet Games wants you to design their new testing strategy. How should the test coverage differ from their existing backends on the other platforms?

Company Overview

Planet Games makes online, session-based, multiplayer games for the most popular mobile platforms. They build all of their games using some server-side integration. Historically, they have used cloud providers to lease physical servers.

Due to the unexpected popularity of some of their games, they have had problems scaling their global audience, application servers MySQL databases, and analytics tools.

Their current model is to write game statistics to files and send them through an ETL tool that loads them into a centralized MySQL database for reporting.

Solution Concept

Planet Games is building a new game, which they expect to be very popular. They plan to deploy the game’s backend on Google Compute Engine so they can capture streaming metrics run intensive analytics, and take advantage of its autoscaling server environment and integrate with a managed NoSQL database.

Business Requirements

Increase to a global footprint

Improve uptime - downtime is loss of players Increase efficiency of the clous resources we use Reduce lateny to all customers

Technical Requirements

Requirements for Game Backend Platform

Dynamically scale up or down based on game activity Connect to a managed NoSQL database service
Run customize Linux distro

Requirements for Game Analytics Platform Dynamically scale up or down based on game activity
Process incoming data on the fly directly from the game servers Process data that arrives late because of slow mobile networks Allow SQL queries to access at least 10 TB of historical data
Process files that are regularly uploaded by users’ mobile devices Use only fully managed services

CEO Statement

Our last successful game did not scale well with our previous cloud provider, resulting in lower user adoption and affecting the game’s reputation. Our investors want more key performance indicators (KPIs) to evaluate the speed and stability of the game, as well as other metrics that provide deeper insight into usage patterns so we can adapt the game to target users.

CTO Statement

Our current technology stack cannot provide the scale we need, so we want to replace MySQL and move to an environment that provides autoscaling, low latency load balancing, and frees us up from managing physical servers.

CFO Statement

We are not capturing enough user demographic data, usage metrics, and other KPIs. As a result, we do not engage the right users, we are not confident that our marketing is targeting the right users, and we are not selling enough premium Blast-Ups inside the games, which dramatically impacts our revenue.

Planet Games has deployed their new backend on Google Cloud Platform (GCP). You want to create a through testing process for new versions of the backend before they are released to the public. You want the testing environment to scale in an economical way. How should you design the process?

Company Overview

Planet Games makes online, session-based, multiplayer games for the most popular mobile platforms. They build all of their games using some server-side integration. Historically, they have used cloud providers to lease physical servers.

Due to the unexpected popularity of some of their games, they have had problems scaling their global audience, application servers MySQL databases, and analytics tools.

Their current model is to write game statistics to files and send them through an ETL tool that loads them into a centralized MySQL database for reporting.

Solution Concept

Planet Games is building a new game, which they expect to be very popular. They plan to deploy the game’s backend on Google Compute Engine so they can capture streaming metrics run intensive analytics, and take advantage of its autoscaling server environment and integrate with a managed NoSQL database.

Business Requirements

Increase to a global footprint

Improve uptime - downtime is loss of players Increase efficiency of the clous resources we use Reduce lateny to all customers

Technical Requirements

Requirements for Game Backend Platform

1. Dynamically scale up or down based on game activity
2. Connect to a managed NoSQL database service
3. Run customize Linux distro

Requirements for Game Analytics Platform

1. Dynamically scale up or down based on game activity
2. Process incoming data on the fly directly from the game servers
3. Process data that arrives late because of slow mobile networks
4. Allow SQL queries to access at least 10 TB of historical data
5. Process files that are regularly uploaded by users’ mobile devices
6. Use only fully managed services

CEO Statement

Our last successful game did not scale well with our previous cloud provider, resulting in lower user adoption and affecting the game’s reputation. Our investors want more key performance indicators (KPIs) to evaluate the speed and stability of the game, as well as other metrics that provide deeper insight into usage patterns so we can adapt the game to target users.

CTO Statement

Our current technology stack cannot provide the scale we need, so we want to replace MySQL and move to an environment that provides autoscaling, low latency load balancing, and frees us up from managing physical servers.

CFO Statement

We are not capturing enough user demographic data, usage metrics, and other KPIs. As a result, we do not engage the right users, we are not confident that our marketing is targeting the right users, and we are not selling enough premium Blast-Ups inside the games, which dramatically impacts our revenue.

Planet Games wants to set up a continuous delivery pipeline. Their architecture includes many small services that they want to be able to update and roll back quickly. Planet Games has the following requirements:

Services are deployed redundantly across multiple regions in the US and Europe
Only frontend services are exposed on the public internet They can provide a single frontend IP for their fleet of services Deployment artifacts are immutable

Which set of products should they use?

Company Overview

Planet Games makes online, session-based, multiplayer games for the most popular mobile platforms. They build all of their games using some server-side integration. Historically, they have used cloud providers to lease physical servers.

Due to the unexpected popularity of some of their games, they have had problems scaling their global audience, application servers MySQL databases, and analytics tools.

Their current model is to write game statistics to files and send them through an ETL tool that loads them into a centralized MySQL database for reporting.

Solution Concept

Planet Games is building a new game, which they expect to be very popular. They plan to deploy the game’s backend on Google Compute Engine so they can capture streaming metrics run intensive analytics, and take advantage of its autoscaling server environment and integrate with a managed NoSQL database.

Business Requirements

Increase to a global footprint

Improve uptime - downtime is loss of players Increase efficiency of the clous resources we use Reduce lateny to all customers

Technical Requirements

Requirements for Game Backend Platform

Dynamically scale up or down based on game activity Connect to a managed NoSQL database service
Run customize Linux distro

Requirements for Game Analytics Platform Dynamically scale up or down based on game activity
Process incoming data on the fly directly from the game servers Process data that arrives late because of slow mobile networks Allow SQL queries to access at least 10 TB of historical data Process files that are regularly uploaded by users’ mobile devices Use only fully managed services

CEO Statement

Our last successful game did not scale well with our previous cloud provider, resulting in lower user adoption and affecting the game’s reputation. Our investors want more key performance indicators (KPIs) to evaluate the speed and stability of the game, as well as other metrics that provide deeper insight into usage patterns so we can adapt the game to target users.

CTO Statement

Our current technology stack cannot provide the scale we need, so we want to replace MySQL and move to an environment that provides autoscaling, low latency load balancing, and frees us up from managing physical servers.

CFO Statement

We are not capturing enough user demographic data, usage metrics, and other KPIs. As a result, we do not engage the right users, we are not confident that our marketing is targeting the right users, and we are not selling enough premium Blast-Ups inside the games, which dramatically impacts our revenue.

Planet Games’ gaming servers are not automatically scaling properly. Last month, they rolled out a new feature, which suddenly became very popular. A record number of users are trying to use the service, but many of them are getting 503 errors and very slow response times. What should they investigate first?

Company Overview

Planet Games makes online, session-based, multiplayer games for the most popular mobile platforms. They build all of their games using some server-side integration. Historically, they have used cloud providers to lease physical servers.

Due to the unexpected popularity of some of their games, they have had problems scaling their global audience, application servers MySQL databases, and analytics tools.

Their current model is to write game statistics to files and send them through an ETL tool that loads them into a centralized MySQL database for reporting.

Solution Concept

Planet Games is building a new game, which they expect to be very popular. They plan to deploy the game’s backend on Google Compute Engine so they can capture streaming metrics run intensive analytics, and take advantage of its autoscaling server environment and integrate with a managed NoSQL database.

Business Requirements

Increase to a global footprint

Improve uptime - downtime is loss of players Increase efficiency of the clous resources we use Reduce lateny to all customers

Technical Requirements

Requirements for Game Backend Platform

Dynamically scale up or down based on game activity Connect to a managed NoSQL database service
Run customize Linux distro

Requirements for Game Analytics Platform Dynamically scale up or down based on game activity
Process incoming data on the fly directly from the game servers Process data that arrives late because of slow mobile networks Allow SQL queries to access at least 10 TB of historical data Process files that are regularly uploaded by users’ mobile devices Use only fully managed services

CEO Statement

Our last successful game did not scale well with our previous cloud provider, resulting in lower user adoption and affecting the game’s reputation. Our investors want more key performance indicators (KPIs) to evaluate the speed and stability of the game, as well as other metrics that provide deeper insight into usage patterns so we can adapt the game to target users.

CTO Statement

Our current technology stack cannot provide the scale we need, so we want to replace MySQL and move to an environment that provides autoscaling, low latency load balancing, and frees us up from managing physical servers.

CFO Statement

We are not capturing enough user demographic data, usage metrics, and other KPIs. As a result, we do not engage the right users, we are not confident that our marketing is targeting the right users, and we are not selling enough premium Blast-Ups inside the games, which dramatically impacts our revenue.

Planet Games needs to create a repeatable and configurable mechanism for deploying isolated application environments. Developers and testers can access each other’s environments and resources, but they cannot access staging or production resources. The staging environment needs access to some services from production.

What should you do to isolate development environments from staging and production?

Company Overview

Planet Games makes online, session-based, multiplayer games for the most popular mobile platforms. They build all of their games using some server-side integration. Historically, they have used cloud providers to lease physical servers.

Due to the unexpected popularity of some of their games, they have had problems scaling their global audience, application servers MySQL databases, and analytics tools.

Their current model is to write game statistics to files and send them through an ETL tool that loads them into a centralized MySQL database for reporting.

Solution Concept

Planet Games is building a new game, which they expect to be very popular. They plan to deploy the game’s backend on Google Compute Engine so they can capture streaming metrics run intensive analytics, and take advantage of its autoscaling server environment and integrate with a managed NoSQL database.

Business Requirements

Increase to a global footprint

Improve uptime - downtime is loss of players Increase efficiency of the clous resources we use Reduce lateny to all customers

Technical Requirements

Requirements for Game Backend Platform

Dynamically scale up or down based on game activity Connect to a managed NoSQL database service
Run customize Linux distro
Requirements for Game Analytics Platform Dynamically scale up or down based on game activity
Process incoming data on the fly directly from the game servers Process data that arrives late because of slow mobile networks Allow SQL queries to access at least 10 TB of historical data Process files that are regularly uploaded by users’ mobile devices Use only fully managed services

CEO Statement

Our last successful game did not scale well with our previous cloud provider, resulting in lower user adoption and affecting the game’s reputation. Our investors want more key performance indicators (KPIs) to evaluate the speed and stability of the game, as well as other metrics that provide deeper insight into usage patterns so we can adapt the game to target users.

CTO Statement

Our current technology stack cannot provide the scale we need, so we want to replace MySQL and move to an environment that provides autoscaling, low latency load balancing, and frees us up from managing physical servers.

CFO Statement

We are not capturing enough user demographic data, usage metrics, and other KPIs. As a result, we do not engage the right users, we are not confident that our marketing is targeting the right users, and we are not selling enough premium Blast-Ups inside the games, which dramatically impacts our revenue.

Planet Games wants to set up a real-time analytics platform for their new game. The new platform must meet their technical requirements.

Which combination of Google technologies will meet all of their requirements?

Company Overview

Planet Games makes online, session-based, multiplayer games for mobile platforms. They build all of their games using some server-side integration. Historically, they have used cloud providers to lease physical servers.

Due to the unexpected popularity of some of their games, they have had problems scaling their global audience, application servers, MySQL databases, and analytics tools.

Their current model is to write game statistics to files and send them through an ETL tool that loads them into a centralized MySQL database for reporting.

Solution Concept

Planet Games is building a new game, which they expect to be very popular. They plan to deploy the game’s backend on Google Compute Engine so they can capture streaming metrics, run intensive analytics, and take advantage of its autoscaling server environment and integrate with a managed NoSQL database.

Business Requirements

Increase to a global footprint

Improve uptime - downtime is loss of players Increase efficiency of the cloud resources we use Reduce latency to all customers

Technical Requirements

Requirements for Game Backend Platform

Dynamically scale up or down based on game activity

Connect to a transactional database service to manage user profiles and game state Store game activity in a timeseries database service for future analysis
As the system scales, ensure that data is not lost due to processing backlogs Run hardened Linux distro

Requirements for Game Analytics Platform Dynamically scale up or down based on game activity
Process incoming data on the fly directly from the game servers Process data that arrives late because of slow mobile networks Allow queries to access at least 10 TB of historical data
Process files that are regularly uploaded by users’ mobile devices

Executive Statement

Our last successful game did not scale well with our previous cloud provider, resulting in lower user adoption and affecting the game’s reputation. Our investors want more key performance indicators (KPIs) to evaluate the speed and stability of the game, as well as other metrics that provide deeper insight into usage patterns so we can adapt the game to target users. Additionally, our current technology stack cannot provide the scale we need, so we want to replace MySQL and move to an environment that provides autoscaling, low latency load balancing, and frees us up from managing physical servers.
For this question, refer to the Planet Games case study. Planet Games wants to migrate from their current analytics and statistics reporting model to one that meets their technical requirements on Google Cloud Platform.

Which two steps should be part of their migration plan? (Choose two.)

Company Overview

Planet Games makes online, session-based, multiplayer games for mobile platforms. They build all of their games using some server-side integration. Historically, they have used cloud providers to lease physical servers.

Due to the unexpected popularity of some of their games, they have had problems scaling their global audience, application servers, MySQL databases, and analytics tools. Their current model is to write game statistics to files and send them through an ETL tool that loads them into a centralized MySQL database for reporting.

Solution Concept

Planet Games is building a new game, which they expect to be very popular. They plan to deploy the game’s backend on Google Compute Engine so they can capture streaming metrics, run intensive analytics, and take advantage of its autoscaling server environment and integrate with a managed NoSQL database.

Business Requirements

Increase to a global footprint

Improve uptime - downtime is loss of players Increase efficiency of the cloud resources we use Reduce latency to all customers

Technical Requirements

Requirements for Game Backend Platform

Dynamically scale up or down based on game activity

Connect to a transactional database service to manage user profiles and game state Store game activity in a timeseries database service for future analysis
As the system scales, ensure that data is not lost due to processing backlogs Run hardened Linux distro

Requirements for Game Analytics Platform Dynamically scale up or down based on game activity
Process incoming data on the fly directly from the game servers Process data that arrives late because of slow mobile networks Allow queries to access at least 10 TB of historical data
Process files that are regularly uploaded by users’ mobile devices

Executive Statement

Our last successful game did not scale well with our previous cloud provider, resulting in lower user adoption and affecting the game’s reputation. Our investors want more key performance indicators (KPIs) to evaluate the speed and stability of the game, as well as other metrics that provide deeper insight into usage patterns so we can adapt the game to target users. Additionally, our current technology stack cannot provide the scale we need, so we want to replace MySQL and move to an environment that provides autoscaling, low latency load balancing, and frees us up from managing physical servers.

For this question, refer to the Planet Games case study. You need to analyze and define the technical architecture for the compute workloads for your company, Planet Games.
Considering the Planet Games business and technical requirements, what should you do?

Company Overview

Planet Games makes online, session-based, multiplayer games for mobile platforms. They build all of their games using some server-side integration. Historically, they have used cloud providers to lease physical servers.

Due to the unexpected popularity of some of their games, they have had problems scaling their global audience, application servers, MySQL databases, and analytics tools.

Their current model is to write game statistics to files and send them through an ETL tool that loads them into a centralized MySQL database for reporting. Solution Concept

Planet Games is building a new game, which they expect to be very popular. They plan to deploy the game’s backend on Google Compute Engine so they can capture streaming metrics, run intensive analytics, and take advantage of its autoscaling server environment and integrate with a managed NoSQL database.

Business Requirements

Increase to a global footprint

Improve uptime - downtime is loss of players Increase efficiency of the cloud resources we use Reduce latency to all customers

Technical Requirements

Requirements for Game Backend Platform

Dynamically scale up or down based on game activity

Connect to a transactional database service to manage user profiles and game state Store game activity in a timeseries database service for future analysis
As the system scales, ensure that data is not lost due to processing backlogs Run hardened Linux distro

Requirements for Game Analytics Platform Dynamically scale up or down based on game activity
Process incoming data on the fly directly from the game servers Process data that arrives late because of slow mobile networks Allow queries to access at least 10 TB of historical data
Process files that are regularly uploaded by users’ mobile devices

Executive Statement

Our last successful game did not scale well with our previous cloud provider, resulting in lower user adoption and affecting the game’s reputation. Our investors want more key performance indicators (KPIs) to evaluate the speed and stability of the game, as well as other metrics that provide deeper insight into usage patterns so we can adapt the game to target users. Additionally,
our current technology stack cannot provide the scale we need, so we want to replace MySQL and move to an environment that provides autoscaling, low latency load balancing, and frees us up from managing physical servers.

For this question, refer to the Planet Games case study. Planet Games wants to design their solution for the future in order to take advantage of cloud and technology improvements as they become available. Which two steps should they take? (Choose two.)