Cloud Engineer Cost Optimization & Resource Management Flashcards

Which Compute Engine pricing model offers the deepest discounts (up to 70% off on-demand) in exchange for a firm 1-year or 3-year commitment?

Answer: Committed Use Discounts (CUD)

Committed Use Discounts (CUDs) offer up to 70% off on-demand prices for a 1- or 3-year commitment to a specific machine type or resource, providing the highest discount tier.

What happens to a Spot VM when Compute Engine needs the capacity back?

Answer: It is stopped or preempted with a 30-second warning

Spot VMs (formerly Preemptible VMs) can be preempted by Google at any time with a 30-second shutdown notice when Compute Engine needs the capacity for other workloads.

Which GCP tool provides budget alerts and can automatically cap spending by disabling billing on a project?

Answer: Cloud Billing budgets and alerts

Cloud Billing budgets let you set a spending threshold and configure email alerts or Pub/Sub notifications; a billing account can also be programmatically disabled at threshold.

A Compute Engine VM runs continuously for a full month. What automatic discount is applied without any commitment required?

Answer: Sustained Use Discount (SUD)

Sustained Use Discounts are automatic discounts of up to 30% applied to VMs that run for a significant portion of the billing month (no commitment required).

Which GCP service provides rightsizing recommendations by analyzing VM CPU and memory utilization data?

Answer: Google Cloud Recommender

Google Cloud Recommender analyzes resource usage patterns and suggests cost-saving actions like rightsizing oversized VMs or removing idle resources.

What Cloud Storage feature can automatically move objects to cheaper storage classes (e.g., Nearline, Coldline) after a set number of days?

Answer: Object Lifecycle Management

Object Lifecycle Management rules in Cloud Storage automatically transition objects to lower-cost storage classes or delete them based on age or other conditions.