GCP Professional Cloud Architect Practice Question

A media-streaming company runs a GKE Autopilot cluster in the us-central1 region. Over the last six months, the cluster has sustained a baseline usage of about 400 vCPUs and 1.6 TiB of RAM, split between n2-standard-8 and n2d-standard-8 nodes. Traffic can occasionally spike to 600 vCPUs. The platform team needs to reduce compute costs while preserving the freedom to switch between N2 and N2D machine families and to scale out during peak periods. Which cost-optimization action best meets these requirements?

Purchase a 1-year flexible (resource-based) Compute Engine committed use discount in us-central1 that covers 400 vCPUs and 1.6 TiB of memory.
Purchase 1-year standard (VM-specific) Compute Engine CUDs for 50 n2-standard-8 and 50 n2d-standard-8 instances in us-central1.
Create a regional capacity reservation for 400 vCPUs and continue running all nodes at on-demand pricing.
Rely solely on automatically applied sustained-use discounts, which begin after 25 percent monthly utilization.

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Answer Description

Flexible (resource-based) committed use discounts (CUDs) let you purchase a one- or three-year commitment for a specific amount of vCPU and memory in a region. Google Cloud automatically applies the discounted rates-currently up to roughly 31 percent for a 1-year term-to any eligible VM family (N1, N2, N2D, and others) running in that region until the committed amount is consumed, so you retain the flexibility to move workloads between n2-standard-8 and n2d-standard-8 nodes and to add on-demand resources during occasional spikes. In contrast, standard (VM-specific) CUDs are tied to particular machine series and shapes, reducing agility; regional capacity reservations provide no cost savings; and relying only on sustained-use discounts delivers smaller, utilization-dependent savings. Therefore, purchasing a 1-year flexible Compute Engine CUD sized for the 400-vCPU/1.6 TiB baseline offers the greatest cost reduction while meeting the team's flexibility and scaling requirements.

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