Google Cloud Professional Cloud Architect — Question 192

Your product team is building a critical, customer-facing application on Google Cloud. The development team wants to use Spanner for their database to take advantage of its horizontal scalability and low operational overhead However, the FinOps team is concerned about the direct monthly cost of Spanner and proposed using a self-managed PostgreSQL database on Compute Engine VMs instead. You need to resolve this conflict and ensure the project moves forward with an architecturally sound database choice that balances technical requirements with financial constraints. What should you do?

Answer options

• A. Provide the development team with a reference architecture for deploying a highly available PostgreSQL cluster on a regional managed instance group (MIG).
• B. Suggest using Cloud SQL for PostgreSQL as a compromise to get a managed service at a lower cost than Spanner.
• C. Develop a total cost of ownership (TCO) analysis that includes operational overhead, and present it in a workshop to facilitate a decision.
• D. Cite the reliability and performance optimization pillars of the Google Cloud Well-Architected Framework to formally justify the use of Spanner.

Correct answer: C

Explanation

The correct answer is C because conducting a total cost of ownership analysis provides a comprehensive view of the financial implications, including both direct costs and operational overhead, enabling informed decision-making. The other options, while valuable, do not directly address the financial concerns or do not facilitate a collaborative decision-making process as effectively as presenting a TCO analysis.