Google Associate Cloud EngineerDeploying and implementing a cloud solutionHard
A financial institution needs to deploy a highly sensitive application on Google Cloud. The application's database requires strong encryption at rest and in transit, and the ability to control encryption keys. Additionally, the database must be globally consistent and horizontally scalable for transactional workloads. Which database service is the most appropriate?
- ACloud Spanner
- BFirestore in Datastore mode
- CCloud Bigtable
- DCloud SQL for PostgreSQL
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: A. Cloud Spanner
Cloud Spanner is a globally distributed, strongly consistent, and horizontally scalable relational database service. It offers encryption at rest and in transit, and supports Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK), making it ideal for highly sensitive, transactional workloads requiring global consistency and key control.
Why the other options are wrong
- B. Firestore in Datastore mode is a NoSQL document database, not a relational database, and while it offers scalability, it doesn't provide the strong global consistency and transactional guarantees of Spanner.
- C. Cloud Bigtable is a NoSQL wide-column database, not a relational database, and doesn't offer strong global consistency for transactional workloads in the same way as Spanner.
- D. Cloud SQL provides encryption and CMEK but is not globally consistent or horizontally scalable to the extent required for Spanner's use cases.
Cloud Spanner
A globally distributed, strongly consistent relational database service built for mission-critical applications at scale. It combines the benefits of relational databases with the horizontal scalability of NoSQL.
- Globally distributed and strongly consistent.
- Horizontally scalable for transactional workloads.
- Relational model with SQL support.
- Supports Customer-Managed Encryption Keys (CMEK).
Memory trick: Spanner: The global banker, strong, scalable, and secure.