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A gaming company is launching a new multiplayer online game. The game backend runs on Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) and interacts with a global database. During peak hours, the database experiences high contention, leading to slow response times and a poor user experience. The development team wants to offload read traffic from the primary database to improve performance and scalability without significantly re-architecting the application. Which Google Cloud service should you recommend to implement a read replica strategy effectively?
- ABigtable for high-throughput, low-latency NoSQL operations.
- BMemorystore for Redis for caching frequently accessed data.
- CCloud Spanner for its global, horizontally scalable nature.
- DCloud SQL read replicas for offloading read operations.
Show answer & explanationAnswer & explanation
Correct answer: D. Cloud SQL read replicas for offloading read operations.
Cloud SQL read replicas are specifically designed to offload read traffic from a primary database instance, improving performance and scalability for read-heavy workloads without requiring significant application re-architecture, directly addressing the scenario's requirements.
Why the other options are wrong
- A. Bigtable is a NoSQL database for analytical and operational workloads, not a direct read replica solution for a transactional global database (implied by 'global database' and 'high contention').
- B. Memorystore for Redis is a caching service, good for reducing database load, but it's not a read replica and requires application changes to implement caching logic.
- C. Cloud Spanner is a globally distributed database, but migrating to it would be a significant re-architecture, not just offloading read traffic from an existing database.
Cloud SQL Read Replicas
Cloud SQL read replicas are copies of a primary Cloud SQL instance that handle read queries, distributing the read workload and improving the performance and availability of the primary instance.
- Supports MySQL, PostgreSQL, and SQL Server.
- Asynchronous replication from primary instance.
- Ideal for read-heavy applications to scale performance.
Memory trick: When the main book is too busy, make copies for everyone to read.