Google Cloud Professional Cloud DevOps Engineer — Question 13

You are performing a semi-annual capacity planning exercise for your flagship service. You expect a service user growth rate of 10% month-over-month over the next six months. Your service is fully containerized and runs on Google Cloud Platform (GCP), using a Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) Standard regional cluster on three zones with cluster autoscaler enabled. You currently consume about 30% of your total deployed CPU capacity, and you require resilience against the failure of a zone. You want to ensure that your users experience minimal negative impact as a result of this growth or as a result of zone failure, while avoiding unnecessary costs. How should you prepare to handle the predicted growth?

Answer options

• A. Verify the maximum node pool size, enable a horizontal pod autoscaler, and then perform a load test to verify your expected resource needs.
• B. Because you are deployed on GKE and are using a cluster autoscaler, your GKE cluster will scale automatically, regardless of growth rate.
• C. Because you are at only 30% utilization, you have significant headroom and you won't need to add any additional capacity for this rate of growth.
• D. Proactively add 60% more node capacity to account for six months of 10% growth rate, and then perform a load test to make sure you have enough capacity.

Correct answer: A

Explanation

Option A is correct because verifying the maximum node pool size and enabling a horizontal pod autoscaler are proactive steps that ensure readiness for user growth while load testing confirms resource needs. Option B is misleading; while GKE can scale automatically, this does not guarantee it can handle the anticipated growth without prior adjustments. Option C incorrectly assumes that current utilization levels are sufficient without considering future growth requirements. Option D suggests adding more capacity without assessing current needs or using autoscaling features, which may result in unnecessary costs.