A team wants the lowest ongoing operational overhead for a stateless HTTP API and is willing to give up control over the host operating system. Which characteristic correctly distinguishes Cloud Run from Compute Engine for this workload?
- ACloud Run runs containers on a fully managed platform where Google patches and maintains the underlying infrastructure, whereas Compute Engine gives you a VM whose guest OS you must patch and maintain yourself. Correct
- BCloud Run requires you to size and patch worker VMs in the same way Compute Engine does, but bills you per request instead of per second of VM uptime.
- CCompute Engine automatically builds and deploys your container image from source, so it carries less deployment overhead than Cloud Run for a stateless API.
- DBoth services abstract the guest operating system equally, so the only real difference for this API is the region where each one can be deployed.
Why A is correct: Cloud Run is a managed serverless container platform, so Google operates the hosts and the candidate manages only the container image and its configuration, while Compute Engine hands you a VM you must patch.
Why B is wrong: This is tempting because both can run the same code, but it is wrong: fully managed Cloud Run exposes no worker VMs for you to size or patch, so the operational overhead claim is false.
Why C is wrong: This inverts the products: Compute Engine gives raw VMs and does no source-to-container build, whereas Cloud Run is the service designed to deploy container images or source directly.
Why D is wrong: This is wrong on substance because Compute Engine does not abstract the guest OS at all; you own patching on the VM, and region availability is not the distinguishing factor here.