Professional Cloud ArchitectManage and provision solution infrastructureMedium

A media streaming company needs to deploy a global application with low-latency access for users worldwide. The application requires a highly available and consistent database that can scale horizontally across regions. Which Google Cloud database is best suited for this scenario?

  1. ACloud SQL for PostgreSQL
  2. BCloud Bigtable
  3. CCloud Firestore
  4. DCloud Spanner
Show answer & explanation

Correct answer: D. Cloud Spanner

Cloud Spanner is a globally distributed, strongly consistent, and horizontally scalable relational database service. It is designed for applications requiring high availability and transactional consistency across multiple regions, making it ideal for a global application with low-latency requirements.

Why the other options are wrong

  • A. Cloud SQL is regional and does not offer global horizontal scaling with strong consistency out of the box.
  • B. Cloud Bigtable is a wide-column NoSQL database suited for analytical and operational workloads, not a relational database with strong transactional consistency across regions.
  • C. Cloud Firestore is a NoSQL document database, not a relational database with strong consistency across regions for global transactions.

Cloud Spanner

Google Cloud's globally distributed, relational database service that offers strong consistency, high availability, and horizontal scalability.

  • Global distribution with strong consistency
  • Horizontally scalable relational database
  • High availability for mission-critical applications

Memory trick: Spanner stretches globally, strongly consistent.

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