Professional Cloud Architect Exam - Answer Key | Mountkirk Games Case Study

Professional Cloud Architect Exam - Answer Key

Question

Mountkirk Games makes online, session-based, multiplayer games for mobile platforms.

They build all of their games using some server-side integration.

Historically, they have used cloud providers to lease physical servers.

Due to the unexpected popularity of some of their games, they have had problems scaling their global audience, application servers, MySQL databases, and analytics tools.

Their current model is to write game statistics to files and send them through an ETL tool that loads them into a centralized MySQL database for reporting.

Solution Concept - Mountkirk Games is building a new game, which they expect to be very popular.

They plan to deploy the game's backend on Google Compute Engine so they can capture streaming metrics, run intensive analytics, and take advantage of its autoscaling server environment and integrate with a managed NoSQL database.

Business Requirements -Increase to a global footprintImprove uptime " downtime is loss of playersIncrease efficiency of the cloud resources we useReduce latency to all customers Technical Requirements - Requirements for Game Backend PlatformDynamically scale up or down based on game activityConnect to a transactional database service to manage user profiles and game stateStore game activity in a timeseries database service for future analysisAs the system scales, ensure that data is not lost due to processing backlogsRun hardened Linux distro Requirements for Game Analytics PlatformDynamically scale up or down based on game activityProcess incoming data on the fly directly from the game serversProcess data that arrives late because of slow mobile networksAllow queries to access at least 10 TB of historical dataProcess files that are regularly uploaded by users' mobile devices Executive Statement -

Answers

Explanations

Click on the arrows to vote for the correct answer

A. B. C. D.

C.

The question describes a scenario where Mountkirk Games is experiencing difficulties scaling their global audience, application servers, MySQL databases, and analytics tools due to the unexpected popularity of their games. They plan to deploy their new game's backend on Google Compute Engine to take advantage of its autoscaling server environment and integrate with a managed NoSQL database.

The business requirements for this solution include increasing their global footprint, improving uptime, reducing latency to all customers, and increasing the efficiency of their cloud resources. The technical requirements for the game backend platform include dynamically scaling up or down based on game activity, connecting to a transactional database service to manage user profiles and game state, storing game activity in a timeseries database service for future analysis, ensuring that data is not lost due to processing backlogs as the system scales, and running a hardened Linux distro. The technical requirements for the game analytics platform include dynamically scaling up or down based on game activity, processing incoming data on the fly directly from the game servers, processing data that arrives late because of slow mobile networks, allowing queries to access at least 10 TB of historical data, and processing files that are regularly uploaded by users' mobile devices.

The executive statement is not relevant to the question.

Out of the four possible answers, option B is the most appropriate solution for Mountkirk Games. By building a test client that can be run from a mobile phone emulator on a Compute Engine virtual machine and running multiple copies in Google Cloud Platform regions all over the world, they can generate realistic traffic and test the scalability and efficiency of their cloud resources. This will also help reduce latency to all customers and improve uptime by identifying potential bottlenecks and issues before they become problems.

Option A, deploying failure injection software to the game analytics platform that can inject additional latency to mobile client analytics traffic, is not a recommended solution as it may adversely affect the user experience and may not accurately simulate real-world traffic.

Option C, adding the ability to introduce a random amount of delay before beginning to process analytics files uploaded from mobile devices, is not a recommended solution as it does not address the root cause of the problem, which is the scalability and efficiency of their cloud resources.

Option D, creating an opt-in beta of the game that runs on players' mobile devices and collects response times from analytics endpoints running in Google Cloud Platform regions all over the world, is not a recommended solution as it may not accurately simulate real-world traffic, and may not be feasible for all players to participate in the beta.

In summary, the most appropriate solution for Mountkirk Games is to build a test client that can be run from a mobile phone emulator on a Compute Engine virtual machine and run multiple copies in Google Cloud Platform regions all over the world to generate realistic traffic.