Your company is planning to deploy a new microservices-based application on GCP. The developers prefer using a managed Kubernetes service for this. Which GCP service would you recommend, and what features should you leverage for cost optimization and automated operations?

*Explanation:* The recommended GCP service for deploying a microservices-based application with a focus on cost optimization and automated operations is **GKE with Autopilot and cluster auto scaler**. GKE Autopilot provides automated operations, scaling, and management, reducing the operational burden on your team. The cluster auto scaler ensures that you optimize costs by automatically adjusting the cluster size based on demand. Options B, C, D, E, and F do not provide the same level of automated operations and cost optimization as GKE with Autopilot. Anthos and Config Connector (Option B. are more geared towards hybrid and multi-cloud scenarios. GCE with Managed Instance Groups (Option C. lacks the managed Kubernetes service aspect. App Engine (Option D) is not a Kubernetes service. GKE with Vertical Pod Autoscaler and Cloud Monitoring (Option E) provides some automation but does not offer the same level of managed operations as Autopilot. Cloud Run (Option F) is a serverless container platform and may not meet the requirement for a managed Kubernetes service.