Cloud Monitoring overview in GCP - Practice Problems & Coding Challenges

Challenge - 5 Problems

🧠 Conceptual

intermediate

Understanding Cloud Monitoring Metrics

Which of the following best describes what a metric in Cloud Monitoring represents?

A A user account permission setting in Google Cloud.

B A static configuration file that defines alerting policies.

C A log entry generated by an application or system.

D A time series data point that measures a specific aspect of a resource or application over time.

💡 Hint

Think about what Cloud Monitoring tracks continuously to observe system health.

Metrics are numerical data points collected over time that represent the state or performance of resources or applications.

💻 Command Output

intermediate

Interpreting Metric Descriptions

What is the output of the following gcloud command that lists metric descriptors for Compute Engine?

GCP

gcloud monitoring metrics descriptors list --filter="metric.type:starts_with('compute.googleapis.com')" --limit=1 --format="value(displayName)"

A Disk read bytes

B Network received bytes

C CPU utilization

D Instance uptime

💡 Hint

The first Compute Engine metric descriptor in list order is CPU utilization.

The command filters metric descriptors starting with 'compute.googleapis.com' and returns the display name of the first metric, which is typically 'CPU utilization'.

🔀 Workflow

advanced

Creating an Alerting Policy Workflow

Which sequence correctly describes the steps to create an alerting policy in Cloud Monitoring?

A 1,2,3,4

B 2,1,3,4

C 1,3,2,4

D 3,1,2,4

💡 Hint

Think about the logical order from selecting what to monitor to saving the alert.

First, you select the resource and metric, then set the condition threshold, next configure notifications, and finally name and save the policy.

❓ Troubleshoot

advanced

Diagnosing Missing Metrics in Cloud Monitoring

You notice that a custom metric you created is not showing any data points in Cloud Monitoring. Which of the following is the most likely cause?

A The metric descriptor was not created or registered properly.

B The Google Cloud project is deleted.

C The metric data is stored in BigQuery instead of Cloud Monitoring.

D The Cloud Monitoring API is disabled in the project.

💡 Hint

Custom metrics require proper registration before data can be sent.

If the metric descriptor is missing or not registered, no data points can be collected or displayed for that metric.

✅ Best Practice

expert

Optimizing Cloud Monitoring Costs

Which practice helps reduce costs when using Cloud Monitoring for a large number of resources?

A Send metric data to multiple projects to distribute storage.

B Use metric filters to collect only necessary metrics and reduce data volume.

C Enable all available metrics for every resource to ensure full coverage.

D Increase the data retention period to keep all historical data indefinitely.

💡 Hint

Think about how to limit data collection to what is essential.

Filtering metrics to collect only what is needed reduces data ingestion and storage costs effectively.