220-1101 Virtualization and Cloud Computing Practice Test 8 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A software development company wants to migrate a custom Python web application to the cloud. The team wants to focus exclusively on writing code and managing the database, without worrying about patching the operating system, managing the runtime environment, or scaling the underlying servers. Which cloud service model BEST meets these requirements?

Choose an answer to begin — your selection is scored in the full session.

Accepted Answer

Platform as a Service (PaaS). Platform as a Service (PaaS) provides a managed platform that includes the runtime environment, operating system, and scaling capabilities, allowing developers to focus solely on writing code and managing the database. In this scenario, the team wants to avoid patching the OS, managing the runtime, or scaling servers, which aligns exactly with PaaS offerings like AWS Elastic Beanstalk or Google App Engine.

Answer

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

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Software as a Service (SaaS)

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Desktop as a Service (DaaS)

Question 2

A cloud provider offers a service where customers can provision virtual servers with varying amounts of CPU, RAM, and storage on-demand. Customers are billed only for the actual resources they consume each hour, with no upfront commitment. This cloud characteristic is known as:

Accepted Answer

Measured service. (Measured service) because the scenario describes a pay-per-use billing model where customers are charged based on actual resource consumption (CPU, RAM, storage) per hour, with no upfront commitment. Measured service is a core NIST-defined cloud characteristic that enables metering and billing for usage, typically using a pay-as-you-go model. This directly matches the description of being billed only for resources consumed each hour.

Answer

Resource pooling

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Rapid elasticity

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On-demand self-service

Question 3

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.

Answer

High availability

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Fault tolerance

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Disaster recovery

Question 4

A financial services company must store customer data on-premises due to strict regulatory requirements. However, they want to leverage cloud resources to run analytics on that data during peak reporting periods. The company plans to use a cloud provider that can securely access the on-premises data and provide additional compute capacity only when needed. Which cloud deployment model BEST describes this configuration?

Accepted Answer

Hybrid cloud. The hybrid cloud model combines on-premises infrastructure (private cloud) with public cloud resources, connected via a secure VPN or dedicated link. This allows the company to keep sensitive customer data on-premises for regulatory compliance while bursting compute-intensive analytics workloads to the public cloud during peak reporting periods, paying only for additional capacity when needed.

Answer

Public cloud

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Private cloud

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Community cloud

Question 5

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

Answer

Rapid elasticity

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Resource pooling

Question 6

A company hosts a critical application on a public cloud provider. The solution is designed with a set of pre-configured virtual machines that are kept powered off in a different availability zone. In the event of a failure in the primary zone, the standby VMs are automatically started, and traffic is rerouted. This design primarily addresses which of the following cloud computing characteristics?

Accepted Answer

Disaster recovery. The design described—pre-configured VMs kept powered off in a different availability zone, automatically started on failure, with traffic rerouted—is a classic warm standby disaster recovery (DR) pattern. Disaster recovery focuses on restoring operations after a major failure or disaster, often in a secondary site or zone, which matches this scenario. High availability (HA) typically uses active-active or active-passive configurations with automatic failover, but the VMs here are powered off, not running, so this is DR, not HA.

Answer

High availability

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Fault tolerance

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Scalability

Question 7

A company needs to run a one-time data analysis job that requires a high-performance virtual machine with 16 vCPUs and 64 GB of RAM. The job will take approximately 3 hours to complete. After the job finishes, the company wants to release the resources and stop paying for them. The cloud provider allows the company to provision such a virtual machine through a web portal in minutes and bills only for the hours the VM is running. This scenario BEST demonstrates which cloud computing characteristic?

Accepted Answer

Rapid elasticity. The scenario describes provisioning a high-performance VM with 16 vCPUs and 64 GB of RAM in minutes, running it for only 3 hours, and then releasing it to stop paying. This directly demonstrates rapid elasticity, which is the ability to quickly scale computing resources up or down on demand and pay only for what is used. The cloud provider's web portal and per-hour billing model enable this near-instant provisioning and de-provisioning, which is the core of rapid elasticity.

Answer

High availability

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Resource pooling

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Metered service

Question 8

A cloud administrator can log into a web portal at any time, day or night, and immediately provision a new virtual server with the desired resources without having to contact the cloud provider's support team or wait for approval. Which essential characteristic of cloud computing does this scenario BEST describe?

Accepted Answer

On-demand self-service. The scenario describes on-demand self-service because the cloud administrator can provision a virtual server instantly via a web portal without human interaction. This characteristic, defined by NIST SP 800-145, allows users to automatically configure computing resources as needed, eliminating the need for manual approval or support tickets.

Answer

Broad network access

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Resource pooling

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Measured service

Question 9

A company maintains a private cloud for processing sensitive financial data. To handle occasional spikes in demand, they establish a VPN connection to a public cloud provider. When the on-premises infrastructure reaches 80% CPU utilization, an automation script provisions additional virtual servers in the public cloud, processes the workload, and then terminates them. Once the load returns to normal, only the private cloud resources are used. This architecture is an example of which cloud deployment model?

Accepted Answer

Hybrid cloud. This architecture combines a private cloud (on-premises infrastructure for sensitive financial data) with a public cloud (virtual servers provisioned via VPN during demand spikes), orchestrated by automation to burst capacity. The key is the integration of both environments through a VPN connection, which is the defining characteristic of a hybrid cloud model. The private cloud handles steady-state workloads, while the public cloud provides elastic overflow, ensuring sensitive data remains on-premises under normal conditions.

Answer

Community cloud

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Public cloud

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Virtual private cloud (VPC)

Question 10

A company hosts a web application on a public cloud. The application experiences unpredictable traffic spikes. The cloud provider automatically provisions additional virtual servers to handle increased load and decommissions them when traffic subsides. The company is billed only for the compute time actually consumed. Which cloud computing characteristic does this scenario BEST describe?

Accepted Answer

Elasticity. Elasticity is the correct answer because the scenario describes the ability to automatically provision and decommission virtual servers in response to unpredictable traffic spikes, with billing only for actual compute time consumed. This matches the cloud computing characteristic of elasticity, which specifically refers to dynamic scaling of resources up or down on demand, as opposed to scalability which is the capacity to handle growth over time.

Answer

Scalability

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High availability

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Fault tolerance

Question 11

A company wants to move its email system to the cloud to reduce the burden of managing servers, operating systems, and software updates. The IT team wants to configure only user mailboxes, email rules, and spam settings through a web-based admin console. The cloud provider will handle all underlying infrastructure, platform, and application maintenance. Which cloud service model BEST meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Software as a Service (SaaS). Software as a Service (SaaS) delivers a fully managed application, including email, where the cloud provider handles all underlying infrastructure, platform, and application maintenance. The IT team only needs to configure user mailboxes, rules, and spam settings via a web-based admin console, which is the hallmark of SaaS. This model eliminates the burden of managing servers, operating systems, and software updates, directly matching the company's requirements.

Answer

Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS)

Answer

Platform as a Service (PaaS)

Answer

Desktop as a Service (DaaS)

Question 12

A company hosts a virtualized application on a public cloud. The application uses a persistent block storage volume for its database. The IT team needs to move the virtual machine to a different availability zone to improve disaster recovery. Which of the following cloud characteristics allows the team to detach the block storage volume from the current VM and attach it to a new VM in the target availability zone without data loss?

Accepted Answer

Persistent block storage. Persistent block storage, such as Amazon EBS or similar services, is designed to be detached from one virtual machine and reattached to another without data loss because the storage volume exists independently of the VM's lifecycle. This allows the IT team to move the volume to a new VM in a different availability zone while preserving the database contents, as the data persists on the block device itself rather than being tied to the VM's ephemeral storage.

Answer

Elasticity

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High availability

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Resource pooling

Question 13

A cloud administrator needs to increase the amount of RAM allocated to a running virtual machine (VM) from 4GB to 8GB to handle a temporary workload spike. The administrator logs into the cloud management console, selects the VM, and changes the instance type to one with 8GB of RAM. The change takes effect immediately without requiring a reboot. Which cloud computing characteristic does this scenario BEST illustrate?

Accepted Answer

Rapid elasticity. Rapid elasticity is the cloud characteristic that allows resources to be scaled up or down quickly and automatically, often without requiring a reboot. In this scenario, the administrator changes the instance type to one with 8GB of RAM, and the change takes effect immediately, demonstrating the rapid provisioning and de-provisioning of resources to meet workload demands.

Answer

Measured service

Answer

Resource pooling

Answer

On-demand self-service

Question 14

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.

Answer

On-demand self-service

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Broad network access

Answer

Measured service

Question 15

A company runs a critical application on a virtual machine (VM) in a public cloud. The application requires a static private IP address and persistent block storage that must be retained if the VM is replaced. Due to performance issues, the IT team needs to migrate the application to a new VM with more vCPUs and RAM. Which of the following actions will achieve this with minimal downtime while preserving the static IP and data?

Accepted Answer

C) Detach the persistent storage volume from the old VM, create a new VM with the desired resources, attach the volume, and assign the static IP to the new VM. It directly addresses the requirements: detaching the persistent block storage (e.g., a cloud volume like an EBS or persistent disk) preserves the data independently of the VM lifecycle, and assigning the static private IP to the new VM maintains network identity. This approach minimizes downtime by avoiding data transfer over the network and allows the new VM to be provisioned with the desired vCPUs and RAM while the old VM remains running until the cutover.

Answer

A) Create a new VM with the desired resources, then manually copy the application data over the network

Answer

B) Migrate the existing VM to a different physical host within the same cloud region

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D) Take a snapshot of the current VM and deploy a new VM instance from that snapshot, then reconfigure the IP