ExpertGCP PCA · Question 01 · Domain 1: Designing and Planning a Cloud Solution Architecture
CASE STUDY: TechStream Gaming
Company Overview:
TechStream Gaming is a global gaming company with 500 employees and $100M in annual revenue. They develop multiplayer online games.
Current Technical Environment:
- On-premises data centers in US and EU
- 200 servers (mix of Windows and Linux)
- MySQL databases (5 TB total)
- Peak concurrent users: 2 million
- Current monthly infrastructure cost: $100K
Business Requirements:
- Reduce infrastructure costs by 40%
- Support 5x user growth over 2 years
- Launch in 3 new regions (APAC, SA, Africa)
- Improve deployment speed (current: 1 week -> target: daily)
Executive Statements:
- CEO: "We need to scale rapidly to compete with larger gaming companies. Cloud migration is critical to our growth strategy."
- CFO: "Cost reduction is paramount. We cannot exceed $60K/month in cloud costs. ROI must be achieved within 18 months."
- CTO: "Our team has limited cloud experience. We need a solution that doesn't require extensive retraining. Reliability is non-negotiable - 99.95% uptime minimum."
Technical Requirements:
- Sub-100ms latency for players globally
- Real-time analytics on player behavior
- Seasonal traffic spikes (5x during holidays)
- DDoS protection
- CI/CD pipeline for daily deployments
Constraints:
- Migration must complete in 12 months
- Cannot exceed 4-hour downtime during cutover
- Development team: 20 engineers (Java, MySQL expertise)
- Operations team: 5 engineers (limited cloud experience)
QUESTION:
Based on the CTO's constraints and the business requirements for daily deployments and scalability, which migration strategy should you recommend for the application tier?
CASE STUDY: TechStream Gaming
Company Overview:
TechStream Gaming is a global gaming company with 500 employees and $100M in annual revenue. They develop multiplayer online games.
Current Technical Environment:
- On-premises data centers in US and EU
- 200 servers (mix of Windows and Linux)
- MySQL databases (5 TB total)
- Peak concurrent users: 2 million
- Current monthly infrastructure cost: $100K
Business Requirements:
- Reduce infrastructure costs by 40%
- Support 5x user growth over 2 years
- Launch in 3 new regions (APAC, SA, Africa)
- Improve deployment speed (current: 1 week -> target: daily)
Executive Statements:
- CEO: "We need to scale rapidly to compete with larger gaming companies. Cloud migration is critical to our growth strategy."
- CFO: "Cost reduction is paramount. We cannot exceed $60K/month in cloud costs. ROI must be achieved within 18 months."
- CTO: "Our team has limited cloud experience. We need a solution that doesn't require extensive retraining. Reliability is non-negotiable - 99.95% uptime minimum."
Technical Requirements:
- Sub-100ms latency for players globally
- Real-time analytics on player behavior
- Seasonal traffic spikes (5x during holidays)
- DDoS protection
- CI/CD pipeline for daily deployments
Constraints:
- Migration must complete in 12 months
- Cannot exceed 4-hour downtime during cutover
- Development team: 20 engineers (Java, MySQL expertise)
- Operations team: 5 engineers (limited cloud experience)
QUESTION:
Based on the CTO's constraints and the business requirements for daily deployments and scalability, which migration strategy should you recommend for the application tier?
Answer options:
Lift and shift (Rehost) the existing VMs to Compute Engine using Migrate for Compute Engine.
Replatform the Java applications to Google Kubernetes Engine (GKE) using Autopilot mode.
Refactor the entire application into serverless Cloud Functions.
Keep the application on-premises and use Anthos to manage the deployments.
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