Google Associate Cloud EngineerDeploying and implementing a cloud solutionEasy

A developer needs to deploy a containerized application to Google Cloud. The application is designed to handle sporadic traffic, scale to zero when idle, and requires a fully managed serverless environment without managing underlying infrastructure. Which Google Cloud compute option is the best fit?

  1. AGoogle Kubernetes Engine (GKE)
  2. BCompute Engine
  3. CCloud Run
  4. DApp Engine Standard
Show answer & explanation

Correct answer: C. Cloud Run

Cloud Run is a fully managed serverless platform for containerized applications that scales automatically, including scaling to zero, and abstracts away infrastructure management.

Why the other options are wrong

  • A. GKE requires managing Kubernetes clusters, which is not 'fully managed serverless without managing underlying infrastructure'.
  • B. Compute Engine requires manual management of VMs and does not natively support scale-to-zero for containerized applications.
  • D. App Engine Standard is serverless but is primarily for specific language runtimes and not generic container images, and might not scale to zero as efficiently for all scenarios.

Cloud Run

A fully managed serverless platform that allows you to run stateless containers invocable via web requests or Pub/Sub events.

  • Scales automatically, including down to zero instances.
  • Pay-per-use, only for resources consumed.
  • Supports any language or library that can be containerized.

Memory trick: Cloud Run for quick container deployment, App Engine for code, GKE for control.

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