220-1101 Practice Test 32 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company runs its customer relationship management (CRM) application on a single virtual machine (VM) in a public cloud IaaS environment. During the workday, the application's response time becomes highly variable and often slow, even though the VM's CPU and memory utilization rarely exceed 50%. The cloud provider states that the physical host is a shared multi-tenant server. Which cloud computing concept is MOST likely causing this performance degradation?

Accepted Answer

Resource pooling leading to the 'noisy neighbor' effect. The performance degradation is most likely due to resource pooling in a multi-tenant IaaS environment, where the 'noisy neighbor' effect occurs. Even though the VM's own CPU and memory utilization are low, another VM on the same physical host may be consuming shared resources like disk I/O or network bandwidth, causing contention. This is a classic symptom of a shared hypervisor where one tenant's workload starves others of critical I/O resources.

Answer

Rapid elasticity causing the VM to be moved between hosts

Answer

Measured service billing that throttles the VM

Answer

Lack of scalability in the application design

Question 2

A company operates a private cloud environment with a cluster of physical hosts running virtual machines. The IT administrator wants to ensure that if a physical host fails unexpectedly, the virtual machines running on that host will be automatically restarted on another healthy host in the cluster without manual intervention. Which feature should the administrator configure?

Accepted Answer

High availability (HA). High Availability (HA) is the correct feature because it is designed to automatically restart virtual machines on another healthy host within a cluster when a physical host fails. HA uses heartbeat monitoring between hosts and the vCenter Server (or equivalent management platform) to detect failures, then triggers VM restarts on surviving hosts without manual intervention. This directly matches the requirement for automatic recovery from an unexpected host failure.

Answer

Fault tolerance (FT)

Answer

Load balancing

Answer

Live migration

Question 3

A desktop computer will not boot. When the power button is pressed, the power LED lights up briefly and then turns off. The technician suspects a possible short circuit. Which of the following is the BEST first step to isolate the issue?

Accepted Answer

Remove the motherboard and test it outside the case on a non-conductive surface. Option D is the best first step because the symptom—power LED briefly lighting then shutting off—strongly suggests a short circuit, often caused by a motherboard standoff or loose screw contacting the case. Removing the motherboard and testing it on a non-conductive surface (e.g., cardboard or the motherboard box) isolates the motherboard from the case, allowing the technician to determine if the short is due to case contact or a component-level fault. This is a standard CompTIA A+ troubleshooting step for suspected shorts before replacing parts.

Answer

Replace the power supply with a known good unit

Answer

Reseat all internal power and data cables

Answer

Install a new motherboard immediately

Question 4

A company runs a cluster of hosts running a Type 1 hypervisor. The virtual machines (VMs) are configured to ensure that if a physical host fails, the VMs running on that host will be automatically restarted on another host in the cluster. Which feature provides this capability?

Accepted Answer

High Availability (HA). High Availability (HA) is the correct feature because it is designed to automatically restart virtual machines on alternate hosts within a cluster when a physical host fails. HA uses heartbeat monitoring between hosts and the management server to detect failures, then triggers the restart of affected VMs on surviving hosts, ensuring minimal downtime without requiring manual intervention.

Answer

vMotion

Answer

Fault Tolerance (FT)

Answer

Distributed Resource Scheduler (DRS)

Question 5

A company wants to move its on-premises email server to the cloud. The goal is to eliminate all management overhead related to the operating system, security patches, and the email application itself. The IT team needs the email service to be highly available and automatically scalable. Which cloud service model BEST meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

B. Software as a Service (SaaS). Software as a Service (SaaS) delivers a fully managed email application over the internet, where the provider handles all underlying infrastructure, operating system, security patches, and application updates. This model eliminates all management overhead for the IT team while offering built-in high availability and automatic scalability, as seen with services like Microsoft 365 Exchange Online or Google Workspace.

Answer

A. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Answer

C. Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Answer

D. Desktop as a Service (DaaS)

Question 6

A company runs multiple virtual machines (VMs) on a single hypervisor host for development and testing. Users report that the VMs are performing poorly. The administrator checks the host and sees that CPU utilization is at 40% and memory utilization is at 50%, but disk I/O latency is extremely high. The host has a single SATA SSD that stores all VM disk files. Which of the following actions would MOST likely improve performance?

Accepted Answer

Use a separate SSD for each VM to distribute I/O load.. The host has a single SATA SSD storing all VM disk files, and disk I/O latency is extremely high despite low CPU and memory utilization. This indicates a storage bottleneck where all VMs contend for the same disk. Using a separate SSD for each VM distributes the I/O load across multiple physical drives, reducing contention and improving performance.

Answer

Add more RAM to the hypervisor host.

Answer

Add additional CPU cores to the hypervisor host.

Answer

Enable memory overcommitment on the hypervisor.

Question 7

A company operates a web application on three virtual machines hosted on a single physical server. To perform hardware maintenance without interrupting service, the administrator moves one VM to another host while the VM continues to run. Which virtualization feature is being used?

Accepted Answer

Live migration. Live migration (A) allows a running virtual machine to be moved from one physical host to another with zero downtime, enabling hardware maintenance without service interruption. This is achieved by transferring memory pages and CPU state over the network while the VM remains operational, typically using protocols like vMotion (VMware) or KVM live migration.

Answer

Virtual machine snapshot

Answer

Resource pooling

Answer

Fault tolerance

Question 8

A company runs a latency-sensitive application on a local server. To handle occasional traffic spikes, the company needs to expand compute resources temporarily without moving the entire application to the cloud. The application runs on a single operating system instance and cannot be easily containerized. Which of the following cloud deployment models BEST allows the company to meet this requirement?

Accepted Answer

Hybrid cloud. A hybrid cloud model allows the company to keep the latency-sensitive application on a local private cloud or on-premises server while temporarily bursting compute resources to a public cloud during traffic spikes. This is achieved through cloud bursting, where additional virtual machines or instances are provisioned in the public cloud and connected to the on-premises environment, without requiring the entire application to be migrated or containerized. The application runs on a single OS instance, so extending resources via hybrid cloud avoids the need for re-architecture while handling peak loads.

Answer

Community cloud

Answer

Public cloud

Answer

Private cloud

Question 9

A technician replaces the CPU and cooler in a desktop computer. After reassembly, the computer boots but shuts down automatically after about two minutes. The technician enters the BIOS and sees the CPU temperature rapidly climbing to 100°C. The CPU cooler fan is spinning at high speed, and the heatsink is firmly attached. Which of the following should the technician check NEXT?

Accepted Answer

The thermal paste application or protective film on the cooler.. The rapid temperature climb to 100°C with the fan spinning at high speed and the heatsink firmly attached indicates that heat is not being transferred from the CPU to the heatsink. The most likely cause is either missing thermal paste or a protective film left on the cooler's base, which acts as an insulator. Checking and reapplying thermal paste or removing the film is the correct next step.

Answer

The CPU voltage settings in the BIOS.

Answer

Whether the CPU is compatible with the motherboard.

Answer

The power supply wattage.

Question 10

A company deploys a stateless web application on multiple virtual machines in a public cloud behind a load balancer. The application experiences unpredictable traffic spikes. During a spike, the load balancer distributes requests evenly, but users report that they are randomly logged out or lose session data such as shopping cart contents. The application is designed to store session state locally on each server. Which of the following should the administrator implement to resolve this issue?

Accepted Answer

Configure sticky sessions (session affinity) on the load balancer.. The correct answer is A because the application stores session state locally on each VM. Without sticky sessions (session affinity), the load balancer distributes each request to any VM, causing users to lose their session if a subsequent request lands on a different server. Enabling sticky sessions ensures all requests from a user are sent to the same VM, preserving the locally stored session data.

Answer

Increase the number of VM instances.

Answer

Implement a shared database for session storage.

Answer

Enable cross-origin resource sharing (CORS) on the load balancer.

Question 11

A company runs critical virtual machines on a single physical server. The IT manager wants to ensure that if the physical server fails, the virtual machines continue to run automatically on another server with minimal downtime. Which feature should be configured on the virtualization platform?

Accepted Answer

High availability. High Availability (HA) is the correct feature because it automatically restarts virtual machines on a surviving host within a cluster when a physical server fails. HA uses heartbeat monitoring between hosts and, upon detecting a loss of heartbeat, triggers the VMs to be powered on elsewhere, achieving minimal downtime without manual intervention.

Answer

Resource pooling

Answer

Virtual desktop infrastructure

Answer

Virtual machine snapshots

Question 12

A company hosts multiple VMs on a Type 1 hypervisor. The physical host has two NICs configured in a teamed pair for redundancy and load balancing. The administrator creates a new VM and attaches it to a virtual switch that is bound to the NIC team. The VM can communicate with other VMs on the same host but cannot communicate with any devices on the physical LAN. Other VMs on the same host can reach the physical LAN. Which of the following is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The VM is assigned to a VLAN that is not allowed on the physical switch ports.. The VM can communicate with other VMs on the same host but not with the physical LAN, while other VMs on the same host can reach the LAN. This indicates the virtual switch is correctly bound to the NIC team and the host has external connectivity, but the specific VM is isolated at Layer 2. The most likely cause is that the VM is assigned to a VLAN that is not allowed (pruned) on the physical switch ports, so its tagged frames are dropped by the upstream switch, preventing any communication beyond the hypervisor.

Answer

The VM's virtual switch is configured as an internal-only switch.

Answer

The NIC teaming mode is set to fault tolerance only.

Answer

The VM's network adapter is set to the wrong MAC address.

Question 13

A company uses a hypervisor to run multiple virtual machines on a single physical server. The host server has 64 GB of RAM. The administrator allocates 8 GB of RAM to each of 10 VMs, for a total allocation of 80 GB. The hypervisor utilizes memory overcommitment, which allows the total allocated memory to exceed the physical memory by sharing idle memory pages among VMs. Which of the following cloud computing characteristics does this configuration BEST demonstrate?

Accepted Answer

Resource pooling. Resource pooling is the cloud characteristic demonstrated because the hypervisor aggregates the physical memory (64 GB) into a shared pool and dynamically allocates it to multiple VMs as needed, even though the total allocated memory (80 GB) exceeds the physical capacity. Memory overcommitment relies on the hypervisor's ability to reclaim idle pages from one VM and assign them to another, which is a direct implementation of resource pooling where physical resources are abstracted and shared among tenants.

Answer

On-demand self-service

Answer

Rapid elasticity

Answer

Measured service

Question 14

A company runs its customer-facing web application on a public cloud platform. The application experiences dramatic traffic spikes during promotional events. The cloud platform automatically increases the number of virtual server instances during high demand and reduces them when demand subsides. The company only pays for the compute resources consumed during the billing cycle. Which cloud computing characteristic does this configuration BEST exemplify?

Accepted Answer

Rapid elasticity. The scenario describes the cloud platform automatically scaling virtual server instances up and down in response to traffic spikes, which is the defining characteristic of rapid elasticity. This allows the company to provision and release compute resources dynamically, paying only for what is used, which is a core benefit of cloud computing.

Answer

On-demand self-service

Answer

Resource pooling

Answer

Measured service

Question 15

A company hosts a web application on a public cloud IaaS platform. During a promotional event, traffic spikes to five times the normal volume. The cloud platform automatically provisions additional virtual machines to handle the load and then deprovisions them when traffic returns to normal. The IT team does not need to perform any manual intervention. Which essential cloud characteristic does this scenario BEST demonstrate?

Accepted Answer

Elasticity. The scenario describes automatic provisioning and deprovisioning of virtual machines in response to fluctuating demand, which is the defining characteristic of elasticity in cloud computing. Elasticity specifically refers to the ability to dynamically scale resources up and down automatically, often in near real-time, to match workload changes without manual intervention. This goes beyond mere scalability by including the automatic removal of resources when they are no longer needed, which is exactly what the cloud platform does during the promotional event.

Answer

Scalability

Answer

High availability

Answer

Fault tolerance