220-1101 Practice Exam 4 — 20 Questions

Question 1

A company requires full control over the operating system and applications running on cloud servers. They want to provision virtual machines with their own custom images and manage all software updates themselves. The cloud provider is responsible only for the underlying physical hardware and hypervisor. Which cloud service model should the company use?

Accepted Answer

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provides virtualized computing resources over the internet, giving the customer full control over the operating system, storage, and applications. The cloud provider manages only the underlying physical hardware and hypervisor, while the customer is responsible for deploying custom images, applying patches, and managing all software updates. This aligns exactly with the company's requirement for full OS and application control with provider responsibility limited to the physical layer.

Answer

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

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Software as a Service (SaaS)

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Desktop as a Service (DaaS)

Question 2

A company hosts its e-commerce website on a public cloud platform. During a marketing campaign, the website experiences a sudden, unplanned spike in traffic. The cloud environment automatically provisions additional virtual servers to handle the load and later decommissions them when traffic returns to normal. This capability is BEST described by which cloud computing characteristic?

Accepted Answer

Elasticity. Elasticity is the cloud computing characteristic that enables automatic scaling of resources up or down based on demand. In this scenario, the cloud platform provisions additional virtual servers during a traffic spike and decommissions them when traffic normalizes, which is the precise definition of elasticity. This differs from high availability, which focuses on uptime through redundancy, not dynamic scaling.

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High availability

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Fault tolerance

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Disaster recovery

Question 3

A company uses a cloud service that allows them to automatically increase the number of web server instances during peak traffic periods and decrease them during off-peak hours. They only pay for the instances they use. This scenario best exemplifies which characteristic of cloud computing?

Accepted Answer

Elasticity. Elasticity in cloud computing refers to the ability to automatically scale resources up or down based on demand. In this scenario, the company automatically increases web server instances during peak traffic and decreases them during off-peak hours, paying only for what they use, which is the defining behavior of elasticity.

Answer

High availability

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Metered service

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Disaster recovery

Question 4

A cloud administrator is migrating a virtual machine from a private cloud to a public cloud. The VM must retain its hostname and IP address. The public cloud provider does not support the same hypervisor as the private cloud. Which of the following migration methods is MOST appropriate?

Accepted Answer

Virtual-to-virtual (V2V). Virtual-to-virtual (V2V) migration is the correct method because it converts a virtual machine from one hypervisor format to another, allowing the VM to run on a public cloud provider that uses a different hypervisor than the private cloud. This process preserves the guest OS, applications, and configuration, including the hostname and IP address, by converting the virtual disk and metadata to the target hypervisor's format.

Answer

Physical-to-virtual (P2V)

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Live migration

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Cloning

Question 5

A company hosts its web application on a public cloud IaaS platform. To ensure availability in case an entire cloud region fails, the company deploys identical infrastructure in two separate regions and configures a traffic management service that automatically routes all user traffic to the healthy region. The secondary region does not normally handle traffic. This architecture is an example of which of the following?

Accepted Answer

Active-passive failover. This architecture is an active-passive failover because the secondary region remains idle (passive) until a failure in the primary region triggers automatic traffic redirection via the traffic management service. The key characteristic is that only one region handles user traffic at a time, with the passive region standing by to take over, ensuring availability during a full cloud region outage.

Answer

Active-active load balancing

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Disaster recovery as a service (DRaaS)

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High availability across availability zones

Question 6

A company wants to move its email system to the cloud. The IT team wants to avoid managing the underlying servers and email software but needs full administrative control over email settings, user accounts, and security policies. Which cloud service model should the company choose?

Accepted Answer

Software as a Service (SaaS). Software as a Service (SaaS) delivers the email application over the internet, with the provider managing the underlying servers, operating systems, and email software. This model allows the company to avoid server and software management while retaining full administrative control over email settings, user accounts, and security policies through the application's management interface. Examples include Microsoft 365 Exchange Online and Google Workspace.

Answer

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

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Platform as a Service (PaaS)

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Desktop as a Service (DaaS)

Question 7

A cloud provider houses multiple customers' virtual machines on the same physical server hardware. Each customer's data and applications are logically isolated, and customers have no knowledge or control over exactly which physical resources they are using. This scenario best describes which essential characteristic of cloud computing?

Accepted Answer

Resource pooling. Resource pooling is the correct characteristic because it describes the cloud provider's ability to serve multiple customers (tenants) from the same physical hardware while maintaining logical isolation. The hypervisor (e.g., VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V) abstracts the underlying physical resources—CPU, RAM, storage—and dynamically allocates them to virtual machines as needed, without the customer knowing or controlling the exact physical hardware. This multi-tenant model is the essence of resource pooling, as defined by NIST SP 800-145.

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On-demand self-service

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Broad network access

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Measured service

Question 8

A company hosts its web servers on a public cloud IaaS platform. They want to ensure that if the physical host running one of their virtual machines fails, the VM automatically restarts on another healthy physical host within the same cloud provider's infrastructure. Which cloud computing characteristic makes this possible?

Accepted Answer

High availability. High availability (C) is the correct answer because it refers to a system's ability to remain operational and automatically recover from failures. In this scenario, the automatic restart of a VM on a healthy physical host after a host failure is a direct implementation of high availability, often achieved through features like VMware vSphere HA or Microsoft Hyper-V Failover Clustering, which monitor host health and restart VMs on surviving hosts.

Answer

Rapid elasticity

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Resource pooling

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Measured service

Question 9

A company runs a Type 1 hypervisor with several production virtual machines (VMs). The physical host has 64 GB of RAM. The administrator observes that the host’s memory usage is consistently at 95%, leaving no free memory for a new VM that needs 8 GB. However, the existing VMs are only using about 50% of their allocated memory. Which hypervisor technology can the administrator use to run the new VM without adding physical RAM?

Accepted Answer

Memory overcommitment with ballooning. Memory overcommitment with ballooning allows the hypervisor to reclaim unused memory from running VMs by using a balloon driver that inflates inside the guest OS, forcing the guest to release memory pages back to the hypervisor. This reclaimed memory can then be allocated to the new VM without adding physical RAM. The scenario describes existing VMs using only 50% of their allocated memory, making ballooning an ideal solution to free up the needed 8 GB.

Answer

Thin provisioning

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vMotion

Answer

Memory mirroring

Question 10

A company wants to ensure business continuity in the event of a primary data center failure. They replicate their critical virtual machines to a cloud provider's secondary region. In the secondary region, the VMs are stored as templates and are not running, but the cloud provider can instantiate them within minutes if needed. The company is charged only for the storage costs of the templates, not for compute resources. This approach BEST demonstrates which cloud computing characteristic?

Accepted Answer

Measured service. This scenario illustrates 'Measured service', one of the five essential cloud characteristics defined by NIST. Measured service means that cloud resources are metered and customers are billed only for what they consume. Here, the company only pays for storage (the templates) and not for idle compute, which would be the case if the VMs were running. While 'rapid elasticity' allows quick provisioning, it does not directly describe the billing model. 'High availability' implies redundant active resources, which is not the case here (VMs are offline). 'Resource pooling' refers to multi-tenant shared infrastructure.

Answer

High availability

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Rapid elasticity

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Resource pooling

Question 11

A company wants to allow multiple developers to each have their own isolated environment on a single physical server. Each developer needs full control over their own operating system and the ability to install custom applications. Which technology is BEST suited for this requirement?

Accepted Answer

Virtualization. Virtualization (A) is the best choice because it allows multiple virtual machines (VMs) to run on a single physical server, each with its own full operating system (OS) instance. Each developer gets isolated, full control over their OS and can install custom applications, as the hypervisor (e.g., VMware ESXi, Microsoft Hyper-V) abstracts the hardware and allocates dedicated resources (CPU, RAM, storage) per VM.

Answer

Containerization

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Cloud computing

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Dual boot

Question 12

A company wants to migrate a custom-developed web application to the cloud. The IT team needs full control over the operating system, middleware, and runtime environment but does not want to manage physical hardware or the underlying virtualization layer. Which cloud service model should the organization choose?

Accepted Answer

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provides virtualized computing resources over the internet, giving the customer full control over the operating system, middleware, and runtime environment while abstracting away the physical hardware and underlying virtualization layer. This matches the requirement for complete control without managing the physical infrastructure.

Answer

Software as a Service (SaaS)

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Platform as a Service (PaaS)

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Desktop as a Service (DaaS)

Question 13

A company hosts a critical web application on a public cloud IaaS platform. The application runs on virtual machines in a single region. The company wants to ensure that the application remains available even if the entire cloud region experiences an outage. They plan to deploy an identical infrastructure in a second region and configure automatic traffic failover. No manual intervention should be required after the failover. Which of the following cloud concepts BEST describes this architecture?

Accepted Answer

High availability. This architecture is best described as high availability because it uses redundant infrastructure in a second region with automatic traffic failover to ensure the application remains accessible during a regional outage. High availability focuses on minimizing downtime by eliminating single points of failure, and the requirement for no manual intervention aligns with an active-passive or active-active HA design using DNS-based or load balancer failover mechanisms.

Answer

Disaster recovery

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Fault tolerance

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Elasticity

Question 14

A company operates a private cloud using a hypervisor cluster. The administrator wants to ensure that if a physical host server fails, the virtual machines running on that host are automatically restarted on other healthy hosts in the cluster with minimal manual intervention. Which hypervisor feature should the administrator configure?

Accepted Answer

High Availability (HA). High Availability (HA) is the correct feature because it automatically detects a physical host failure and restarts the affected virtual machines on other healthy hosts in the cluster without requiring manual intervention. This is achieved through heartbeat monitoring between hosts and a cluster resource management system that ensures VM availability after a host crash.

Answer

Live Migration

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Fault Tolerance

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Resource Pooling

Question 15

A company wants to migrate its on-premises infrastructure to the cloud while retaining full control over network configuration, firewall rules, and security policies. The company does not want to manage physical servers, storage, or the underlying hypervisor. Which cloud service model BEST meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service). IaaS (Infrastructure as a Service) provides virtualized computing resources over the internet, allowing the company to manage network configurations, firewall rules, and security policies while the cloud provider handles physical servers, storage, and the hypervisor. This model gives the customer control over the operating system, middleware, and applications, but not the underlying physical infrastructure, directly matching the requirement to avoid managing physical hardware.

Answer

SaaS (Software as a Service)

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PaaS (Platform as a Service)

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DaaS (Desktop as a Service)

Question 16

A company runs an internal web application on an on-premises virtual server that handles typical daily traffic. During seasonal sales, traffic spikes to ten times the normal volume. The company configures a public cloud service to automatically deploy additional virtual server instances when the on-premises server reaches a certain utilization threshold. These instances connect to the same database and load balancer, and they are terminated when traffic returns to normal. Which cloud architecture does this describe?

Accepted Answer

Cloud bursting. This scenario describes cloud bursting, a hybrid cloud model where an application runs primarily on-premises but can 'burst' into the public cloud during peak demand. This allows the company to handle traffic spikes without maintaining expensive idle capacity on-premises. Rapid elasticity is a characteristic of cloud computing, but cloud bursting is the specific architectural pattern that combines on-premises and public cloud resources.

Answer

Rapid elasticity

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Resource pooling

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High availability

Question 17

A company runs a critical database server on a virtual machine hosted on a Type 1 hypervisor. The requirement is that the database server must remain operational and accessible even if the underlying physical host experiences a hardware failure. Which of the following virtualization features should be implemented to achieve this goal?

Accepted Answer

Fault tolerance. Fault tolerance (B) is correct because it creates a secondary, shadow virtual machine that runs in lockstep with the primary VM. If the physical host fails, the secondary VM takes over instantly with no data loss or downtime, ensuring the database server remains operational.

Answer

Live migration

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Load balancing

Answer

Snapshot

Question 18

A laser printer produces light ghost images of previously printed text on the following page. The technician has already replaced the toner cartridge and the imaging drum with new OEM components. The fuser appears to be heating properly. Which of the following is the NEXT component the technician should inspect or replace?

Accepted Answer

Primary charge corona / charge roller. The primary charge corona or charge roller is responsible for applying a uniform electrostatic charge to the imaging drum before the laser writes the image. If this component is failing, it may not fully erase the previous charge pattern, leaving residual latent images that develop into ghost images. Replacing the toner cartridge and drum eliminates those as causes, and the fuser is heating properly, so the charge roller is the next likely culprit.

Answer

Transfer roller

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Laser scanner unit

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Erase lamp

Question 19

A technician is building a new desktop computer using an AMD Ryzen 5 5600X CPU and a B450 chipset motherboard. After assembling all components, the system powers on. The case fans and CPU fan spin, but there is no display output. The motherboard's CPU debug LED remains lit. The technician has already reseated the CPU (no bent pins), verified the RAM is seated correctly, and tested the power supply with a multimeter (voltages within specification). The GPU works in another system. Which of the following should the technician do NEXT?

Accepted Answer

Update the motherboard BIOS to a version that supports Ryzen 5000 series processors. The AMD Ryzen 5 5600X is a Vermeer (Zen 3) processor, while B450 motherboards originally launched with support for Ryzen 2000 (Pinnacle Ridge) and Ryzen 3000 (Matisse) CPUs. A BIOS update is required to add the AGESA microcode that enables Zen 3 support. The CPU debug LED staying lit indicates the motherboard cannot initialize the CPU, which is the classic symptom of an incompatible BIOS version.

Answer

Replace the power supply unit with a higher wattage model

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Reseat the GPU in a different PCIe slot

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Replace the CMOS battery and clear the CMOS

Question 20

A network laser printer is printing pages with garbled characters and random symbols. The technician prints a test page from the printer's control panel, which prints correctly. The technician then prints from a different computer on the same network, and the printout is also garbled. The printer driver has been reinstalled. Which of the following should the technician check NEXT?

Accepted Answer

Change the printer's emulation mode. The correct answer is C because the printer prints correctly from its own test page but produces garbled output from multiple network computers, indicating the issue is with how the print data is interpreted. Changing the printer's emulation mode (e.g., from PCL to PostScript or vice versa) resolves mismatches between the driver's page description language and the printer's interpreter, which is a common cause of garbled characters when the driver reinstall hasn't fixed the problem.

Answer

Replace the network cable

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Update the printer firmware

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Replace the imaging drum