Google Associate Cloud EngineerPlanning and configuring a cloud solutionMedium
A data analytics team needs to store large datasets (tens of terabytes) that are accessed frequently for real-time dashboards and ad-hoc queries. These datasets have a structured schema and require strong transactional consistency. Which Google Cloud storage option is most suitable?
- ACloud Spanner
- BCloud SQL
- CBigQuery
- DCloud Storage Multi-Regional
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: C. BigQuery
BigQuery is a fully managed, serverless data warehouse designed for analyzing large datasets (petabytes to exabytes) with SQL. It offers excellent performance for analytical queries and is ideal for real-time dashboards and ad-hoc analysis on structured data.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Cloud Spanner is a globally distributed relational database, suitable for transactional workloads requiring strong consistency at global scale, but BigQuery is optimized specifically for analytical querying of large datasets.
- B. Cloud SQL is a managed relational database service, but it is typically used for operational transactional workloads and is less cost-effective or performant for tens of terabytes of data primarily for analytical querying compared to BigQuery.
- D. Cloud Storage is an object storage service, not designed for structured data with transactional consistency or direct SQL querying for analytics.
BigQuery
A serverless, highly scalable, and cost-effective multi-cloud data warehouse designed for business agility.
- Petabyte-scale analytics.
- SQL query engine.
- Serverless and fully managed.
Memory trick: Big data needs BigQuery for big insights.