ExpertGCP PCA · Question 06 · Domain 1: Designing and Planning a Cloud Solution Architecture
CASE STUDY: TrendWear Apparel
Company Overview:
TrendWear Apparel is a global clothing retailer with an e-commerce platform and 500 physical stores.
Current Technical Environment:
- On-premises VMware environment
- Legacy IBM Mainframe for core inventory management
- Monolithic e-commerce application running on VMs
Business Requirements:
- Modernize the e-commerce platform to handle Black Friday (10x normal traffic)
- Unify online and in-store inventory data in real-time
- Avoid major capital expenditure (CapEx) for data center refreshes
Executive Statements:
- CEO: "We need an omnichannel experience. Customers should see accurate store inventory online."
- CFO: "We must shift from CapEx to OpEx. No more buying hardware."
- CTO: "We want to move to microservices, but we cannot retire the mainframe for at least 3 years due to complex legacy dependencies."
Technical Requirements:
- Hybrid architecture connecting GCP and on-premises
- Microservices architecture for the new e-commerce platform
- PCI-DSS compliance for all payment processing
- Consistent management plane across on-prem and cloud
Constraints:
- Mainframe must remain on-premises
- E-commerce migration must be completed before the next holiday season (8 months)
QUESTION:
Based on the CTO's requirement for a consistent management plane across on-premises and the cloud, and the need to modernize to microservices while keeping the mainframe, which compute architecture should you recommend?
CASE STUDY: TrendWear Apparel
Company Overview:
TrendWear Apparel is a global clothing retailer with an e-commerce platform and 500 physical stores.
Current Technical Environment:
- On-premises VMware environment
- Legacy IBM Mainframe for core inventory management
- Monolithic e-commerce application running on VMs
Business Requirements:
- Modernize the e-commerce platform to handle Black Friday (10x normal traffic)
- Unify online and in-store inventory data in real-time
- Avoid major capital expenditure (CapEx) for data center refreshes
Executive Statements:
- CEO: "We need an omnichannel experience. Customers should see accurate store inventory online."
- CFO: "We must shift from CapEx to OpEx. No more buying hardware."
- CTO: "We want to move to microservices, but we cannot retire the mainframe for at least 3 years due to complex legacy dependencies."
Technical Requirements:
- Hybrid architecture connecting GCP and on-premises
- Microservices architecture for the new e-commerce platform
- PCI-DSS compliance for all payment processing
- Consistent management plane across on-prem and cloud
Constraints:
- Mainframe must remain on-premises
- E-commerce migration must be completed before the next holiday season (8 months)
QUESTION:
Based on the CTO's requirement for a consistent management plane across on-premises and the cloud, and the need to modernize to microservices while keeping the mainframe, which compute architecture should you recommend?
Answer options:
Migrate all VMs to Compute Engine and use Cloud VPN to connect to the mainframe.
Deploy Google Cloud Anthos, running GKE clusters both on Google Cloud and on-premises (Anthos clusters on VMware).
Use Cloud Run for the e-commerce platform and Cloud Interconnect to access the mainframe.
Rewrite the mainframe applications into Cloud Functions to eliminate the hybrid requirement.
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