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A large manufacturing company wants to implement predictive maintenance for its industrial machinery. They have a massive volume of time-series sensor data (e.g., temperature, vibration, pressure) generated at high velocity from thousands of machines. This data needs to be ingested and processed in real-time to detect anomalies and predict failures. Which Google Cloud database is best suited for storing and analyzing this type of data?

  1. ACloud Bigtable
  2. BCloud SQL
  3. CCloud Spanner
  4. DFirestore
Show answer & explanation

Correct answer: A. Cloud Bigtable

Cloud Bigtable is a wide-column NoSQL database designed for large analytical and operational workloads, especially suitable for high-throughput, low-latency time-series data like sensor readings and IoT data. It excels at handling massive volumes of data with consistent performance.

Why the other options are wrong

  • B. Cloud SQL is a relational database more suited for transactional data, not high-volume, high-velocity time-series data.
  • C. Cloud Spanner is a globally distributed relational database, overkill and less cost-effective for pure time-series sensor data without strong relational transaction needs.
  • D. Firestore is a document database for web/mobile apps, not optimized for petabyte-scale time-series analytics.

Cloud Bigtable

Cloud Bigtable is a fully managed, scalable NoSQL wide-column database service for large analytical and operational workloads, particularly well-suited for time-series data, IoT data, and financial data.

  • High-throughput, low-latency performance for petabyte-scale data.
  • Ideal for time-series data, IoT, and operational analytics.
  • Consistent sub-10ms latency for reads and writes.

Memory trick: Bigtable handles 'Big' data, especially time-series, like a 'Table' of sensor readings.

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