Google Cloud Certified Associate Cloud Engineer Practice

What mechanism in Google Cloud allows you to track custom information in code and save it to Stackdriver?

1. Custom monitoring metric

2. Cloud Launcher

3. Metadata

4. App Engine

The correct answer is: Custom monitoring metric

The ability to track custom information in code and save it to Stackdriver is accomplished through the use of custom monitoring metrics. Custom monitoring metrics allow developers to define specific metrics that are relevant to their applications and services. By instrumenting their code to report these custom metrics, developers can capture data that may not be covered by Google's predefined metrics. When these custom metrics are sent to Stackdriver (now known as Google Cloud Operations Suite), they can be visualized and queried through the monitoring dashboards. This enables teams to keep a close eye on application performance, troubleshoot issues, and understand user behavior or application health based on the relevant data collected. In contrast, the other options do not specifically address the tracking of custom information in the way required. For example, Cloud Launcher provides a way to deploy applications but does not facilitate custom metric tracking. Similarly, metadata refers to data that provides information about other data but does not inherently deal with custom metrics tracking. App Engine is a platform for building and hosting applications, but it does not directly provide a mechanism for monitoring custom information without the use of custom metrics. Thus, custom monitoring metrics are the correct mechanism for this purpose.