220-1101 Virtualization and Cloud Computing Practice Test 3 — 15 Questions

Question 1

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.

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SaaS (Software as a Service)

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PaaS (Platform as a Service)

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DaaS (Desktop as a Service)

Question 2

A company uses a public cloud IaaS provider. A developer needs to create a new virtual machine for testing. The developer logs into the cloud management console, selects the desired OS and size, and launches the VM. The VM is ready within minutes. No interaction with the cloud provider's staff is required. Which cloud computing characteristic does this best represent?

Accepted Answer

On-demand self-service. The scenario describes a user provisioning a virtual machine without any human interaction with the cloud provider, which is the defining characteristic of on-demand self-service. This capability is a core NIST definition of cloud computing, allowing users to automatically provision computing resources as needed without requiring service provider intervention.

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Resource pooling

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Rapid elasticity

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Measured service

Question 3

A company wants to move its email system to the cloud. The cloud vendor provides the email service, including server hardware, operating system, and software. The company only needs to manage user accounts and mailboxes. Which cloud service model is the vendor providing?

Accepted Answer

Software as a Service (SaaS). The vendor provides the entire email service, including server hardware, operating system, and software, while the company only manages user accounts and mailboxes. This matches the Software as a Service (SaaS) model, where the provider delivers a complete application over the internet, and the customer has no control over the underlying infrastructure or platform.

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Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

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Platform as a Service (PaaS)

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Desktop as a Service (DaaS)

Question 4

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

Accepted Answer

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS). Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) provides virtualized computing resources over the internet, allowing the company to manage and control the network configuration, firewall rules, and security policies while the cloud provider handles the physical servers, storage, and hypervisor. This model gives the customer full control over the operating system, storage, and deployed applications, meeting the requirement of not managing the underlying physical infrastructure.

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Software as a Service (SaaS)

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Platform as a Service (PaaS)

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Database as a Service (DBaaS)

Question 5

A company hosts a critical application on two virtual machines located in different availability zones within the same cloud region. Both VMs are active and running simultaneously. The application is designed such that if one VM fails, the other continues serving traffic without any downtime. Which cloud concept does this configuration BEST demonstrate?

Accepted Answer

Fault tolerance. This configuration demonstrates fault tolerance because the application is designed to continue operating without interruption when one VM fails. By running two active VMs in different availability zones within the same region, the system eliminates a single point of failure and ensures zero downtime during a component failure, which is the defining characteristic of fault tolerance.

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Elasticity

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Load balancing

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Auto-scaling

Question 6

A company hosts its e-commerce website on a public cloud IaaS platform. During a flash sale, traffic spikes to 10 times the normal volume. The cloud platform automatically provisions additional virtual servers to handle the increased load and then deprovisions them after the sale ends, requiring no manual intervention. Which essential cloud characteristic does this scenario BEST demonstrate?

Accepted Answer

Rapid elasticity. The scenario describes the cloud platform automatically scaling virtual server resources up and down in response to demand spikes, with no manual intervention. This is the defining characteristic of rapid elasticity, which allows resources to be provisioned and released elastically, often automatically, to match workload fluctuations. The key is the dynamic scaling triggered by traffic changes, not the mere presence of redundancy or distribution.

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High availability

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Fault tolerance

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Load balancing

Question 7

A company wants to ensure that its cloud-based application remains available even if an entire data center goes offline. The company deploys the application across multiple geographically separate data centers operated by the cloud provider. Which cloud concept is the company implementing?

Accepted Answer

Fault tolerance. Fault tolerance is the correct answer because the company is designing the application to continue operating without interruption even if an entire data center fails. This is achieved by deploying redundant instances across multiple geographically separate data centers, ensuring that no single point of failure can bring down the application. Unlike high availability, which minimizes downtime, fault tolerance aims for zero downtime by maintaining active copies in separate failure domains.

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High availability

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Load balancing

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Elasticity

Question 8

A company hosts its critical application on a public cloud IaaS platform. The IT team has configured replication of data from the primary cloud region to a secondary region. In the event of a disaster that takes down the primary region, the IT team will manually start the virtual machines in the secondary region using the replicated data. The application will then resume service. Which cloud concept does this configuration BEST describe?

Accepted Answer

Disaster recovery. This scenario describes a disaster recovery (DR) configuration because the application relies on a manual failover process to a secondary region after a catastrophic failure of the primary region. The use of replicated data and manual startup of VMs aligns with a cold standby or pilot light DR model, where recovery time is measured in minutes or hours, not seconds. High availability and fault tolerance require automatic, near-instantaneous failover without human intervention, which is not present here.

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High availability

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Fault tolerance

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Elasticity

Question 9

A company wants to deploy a custom web application in the cloud. The development team wants to focus on writing code and does not want to manage the underlying operating system or runtime environment. The company expects the application to experience unpredictable traffic spikes and requires automatic scaling. Which cloud service model would BEST meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

B. Platform as a Service (PaaS). Platform as a Service (PaaS) provides a managed platform that includes the operating system and runtime environment, allowing developers to focus solely on writing code. It also offers built-in automatic scaling to handle unpredictable traffic spikes without manual intervention, making it the best fit for the described requirements.

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A. Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

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C. Software as a Service (SaaS)

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D. Function as a Service (FaaS)

Question 10

A company hosts a critical application on a public cloud platform. The IT team configures the application to run on multiple virtual machines in an auto-scaling group. The cloud platform monitors the health of each instance. If a health check fails, the platform automatically terminates the unhealthy instance and launches a new one to maintain the desired capacity. Which cloud concept does this configuration BEST illustrate?

Accepted Answer

High availability. This configuration best illustrates high availability because the auto-scaling group and health check mechanism ensure that the application remains accessible despite instance failures. By automatically replacing unhealthy instances, the system minimizes downtime and maintains service continuity, which is the core goal of high availability in cloud computing.

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Elasticity

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Fault tolerance

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Disaster recovery

Question 11

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.

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Scalability

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High availability

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Fault tolerance

Question 12

A small business uses a public cloud IaaS provider to host its website. The business is charged monthly based on the total amount of CPU time, storage capacity used, and data transferred. The business can view detailed usage reports through the provider's portal. Which essential cloud characteristic does this billing model BEST demonstrate?

Accepted Answer

Measured service. The billing model charges based on actual usage metrics (CPU time, storage, data transfer), which is the defining characteristic of measured service. In cloud computing, measured service means that resource usage is monitored, controlled, and reported, enabling pay-per-use billing. This is distinct from simply provisioning resources on demand or pooling them.

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Resource pooling

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Rapid elasticity

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On-demand self-service

Question 13

A technician is setting up two virtual machines on a Type 1 hypervisor. The VMs need to communicate with each other using private IP addresses, and the traffic must remain within the physical host—it must not traverse the physical network. The hypervisor host is connected to the physical network via a single NIC. Which of the following should the technician configure to meet these requirements?

Accepted Answer

An internal virtual switch. An internal virtual switch on a Type 1 hypervisor allows VMs to communicate using private IP addresses while keeping all traffic within the physical host. Since the switch does not connect to the host's physical NIC, traffic never leaves the host, meeting the requirement that it must not traverse the physical network.

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A virtual network interface card (vNIC) on each VM connected to a bridged adapter

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A NAT network adapter for each VM

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A VLAN ID on the physical switch port that connects to the hypervisor host

Question 14

A company hosts its customer-facing web application on a public cloud IaaS platform. The application runs on multiple virtual machines. The IT team configures the platform to automatically distribute incoming traffic across the healthy VMs and to reroute traffic away from any VM that fails. Which cloud concept does this configuration BEST describe?

Accepted Answer

Load balancing. The configuration described—automatically distributing incoming traffic across healthy VMs and rerouting traffic away from any failed VM—is the definition of load balancing. Load balancers (e.g., HAProxy, AWS ELB, NLB) use health checks (e.g., HTTP 200, TCP SYN) to monitor VM status and remove unhealthy nodes from the pool, ensuring traffic is only sent to responsive instances. This directly matches the scenario of distributing traffic and rerouting on failure.

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Auto-scaling

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High availability

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Elasticity

Question 15

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.

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Disaster recovery

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Fault tolerance

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Elasticity