CompTIA · Free Practice Questions · Last reviewed May 2026
30real exam-style questions organised by domain, each with the correct answer highlighted and a plain-English explanation of why it's right — and why the others are wrong.
23% of exam · 6 sample questions below
A company wants to migrate its on-premises workload to the cloud and needs to maintain full control over the operating system, middleware, and applications. Which cloud service model should the company choose?
PaaS
FaaS
SaaS
IaaS
IaaS provides virtual machines where the customer manages OS and above.
Which cloud deployment model connects an on-premises data center to a public cloud using VPN or dedicated connections like AWS Direct Connect?
Private cloud
Multi-cloud
Hybrid cloud
Hybrid cloud combines on-premises and public cloud.
Public cloud
A cloud architect is designing a highly available web application. The application must remain available even if an entire AWS Availability Zone fails. The architect decides to deploy identical application instances in two separate Availability Zones and distribute traffic equally. Which architecture is being implemented?
Fault tolerance
Warm standby
Active-active
Both instances are active and traffic is distributed equally.
Active-passive
A company runs a stateless web application on virtual machines. To handle increased traffic, they add more virtual machines and distribute incoming requests among them. What is this scaling method called?
Right-sizing
Vertical scaling
Auto-scaling
Horizontal scaling
Horizontal scaling adds more instances.
A cloud engineer needs to store database backups that must be retained for seven years. The backups are rarely accessed. Which storage type is most cost-effective for this use case?
Object storage
Block storage
Archive storage
Archive storage is designed for long-term, low-cost retention.
File storage
A company uses AWS and Azure for redundancy. They deploy the same application on both clouds to avoid vendor lock-in and improve disaster recovery. Which cloud deployment model is this?
Community cloud
Hybrid cloud
Private cloud
Multi-cloud
Multi-cloud uses multiple public clouds.
Want more Cloud Architecture and Design practice?
Practice this domainA cloud architect is creating a Terraform configuration to deploy resources in AWS. The architect needs to store the state file in a remote backend that supports state locking and encryption at rest. Which backend should the architect configure?
Local file system with Terraform Cloud
S3 with DynamoDB for state locking
S3 backend with DynamoDB provides remote state and locking.
Azure Blob Storage with a lease blob for locking
Google Cloud Storage with object versioning
A DevOps team is implementing a CI/CD pipeline to deploy a microservices application on Kubernetes. The team wants to ensure that the deployment automatically rolls back if the new version fails health checks after the update. Which Kubernetes feature should be configured in the deployment manifest?
A readiness probe with a low failure threshold
Readiness probes control whether a pod is considered ready; failures can trigger rollback.
A startup probe with a long initial delay
A ConfigMap for health check endpoints
A liveness probe with a high failure threshold
A company is migrating a 50 TB on-premises database to AWS RDS MySQL. The migration must have minimal downtime and support ongoing replication during the cutover. The database schema is standard MySQL. Which combination of services should the company use?
AWS DMS with schema conversion tool to convert to MySQL
AWS Database Migration Service (DMS) with Change Data Capture (CDC) replication
DMS supports CDC for minimal downtime.
AWS Snowball Edge to transfer database dump, then import to RDS
AWS DataSync to transfer database files to S3, then restore to RDS
An organization uses CloudFormation to manage infrastructure across multiple AWS accounts. The team wants to deploy a common set of resources, such as VPCs and security groups, to all accounts in a consistent manner. Which CloudFormation feature should they use?
Change sets
Drift detection
StackSets
StackSets enable multi-account deployments.
Nested stacks
A cloud engineer is designing a deployment strategy for a web application that requires zero downtime. The engineer has set up two identical production environments, one active and one idle. After deploying the new version to the idle environment, the engineer switches the DNS record to point to the idle environment. This deployment method is known as:
Blue/green deployment
Blue/green uses two environments and a switch.
Rolling deployment
A/B testing deployment
Canary deployment
A team is developing a serverless application on AWS Lambda. The application uses several third-party libraries that are large in size. To reduce deployment package size and enable reuse across functions, the team wants to include these libraries as a separate layer. However, the total unzipped size of all layers exceeds the Lambda limits. What should the team do to resolve this?
Increase the Lambda function's reserved concurrency
Use a container image for the Lambda function instead of layers
Container images allow larger packages (up to 10 GB).
Reduce the number of layers by combining libraries into fewer custom layers
Request a service limit increase from AWS for layer size
Want more Deployment practice?
Practice this domainA cloud engineer is configuring a web application on AWS and needs to ensure that only HTTP and HTTPS traffic from the internet is allowed to reach the EC2 instances. Which AWS service should be used to control inbound traffic at the instance level?
Security Group
Security groups are stateful instance-level firewalls that can allow HTTP/HTTPS inbound traffic.
AWS Shield
AWS WAF
Network ACL
A company is migrating to a public cloud and wants to understand security responsibilities. According to the shared responsibility model, which of the following is the customer responsible for in an IaaS deployment?
Patching the guest operating system
The customer manages the guest OS and must apply patches.
Network infrastructure security
Physical security of data centers
Hypervisor security
A security administrator needs to enforce least privilege for a Kubernetes cluster in a cloud environment. Which approach should be used to restrict permissions for pods that need to access the cloud provider's API?
Assign the pod a static cloud IAM user credential
Disable cloud API access for all pods
Use a service account with a role that has only the required permissions
Service accounts provide secure, scoped access for pods.
Grant the pod cluster-admin privileges in Kubernetes
An organization is moving sensitive data to the cloud and must ensure it is encrypted while stored on disk. Which type of encryption should be implemented?
Encryption in transit
Encryption at rest
Encryption at rest secures data stored on persistent media.
Hashing
Tokenization
A cloud administrator needs to provide external partners with access to a cloud application using their existing corporate credentials. Which federation protocol should be used?
RADIUS
Kerberos
SAML
SAML allows identity federation and SSO with external identity providers.
LDAP
A company is using a SaaS application and wants to gain visibility into user activity and enforce data loss prevention policies. Which technology should be deployed?
Intrusion Detection System (IDS)
Web Application Firewall (WAF)
Cloud Access Security Broker (CASB)
CASB sits between users and SaaS to monitor and enforce policies.
Network Access Control (NAC)
Want more Security practice?
Practice this domain27% of exam · 6 sample questions below
A cloud architect is designing a monitoring solution for a web application. Which service should they use to collect and visualize metrics such as CPU utilization and network throughput?
AWS CloudTrail
AWS CloudWatch
CloudWatch provides metrics collection and dashboards.
AWS Config
AWS Trusted Advisor
A company wants to receive alerts when their cloud costs exceed a budget threshold. Which cost management feature should they use?
Cost anomaly detection alerts
Incorrect. Cost anomaly detection alerts focus on unusual spending patterns, not static budget thresholds.
Rightsizing recommendations
Reserved Instance planning
Tagging strategy
A cloud administrator is configuring automated scaling for a web application. The scaling policy should add two instances when CPU utilization exceeds 80% for five minutes. Which type of scaling policy should they implement?
Scheduled scaling
Dynamic scaling
Target tracking scaling
Step scaling
Step scaling adds or removes instances based on breach magnitude.
A systems administrator notices that an application is slow to respond. They want to analyze the latency of individual requests across microservices. Which tool should they use?
AWS X-Ray
X-Ray provides end-to-end tracing for request latency.
CloudWatch Logs
VPC Flow Logs
AWS CloudTrail
A company uses multiple AWS accounts. The cloud team wants to allocate costs to specific business units. What should they implement?
Cost Explorer
AWS Budgets
AWS Organizations
Tagging strategy
Tags allow cost tracking by business unit.
A cloud engineer is setting up automated patching for Linux instances in AWS. They need to define a maintenance window during which patches are applied. Which service should they use?
AWS Config
AWS OpsWorks
AWS Systems Manager Patch Manager
Patch Manager automates patching with schedules.
Amazon Inspector
Want more Operations and Support practice?
Practice this domainA cloud administrator receives an alert that a virtual machine (VM) is unresponsive. The VM is hosted on a hypervisor that shows high CPU ready time. Which of the following is the most likely cause?
Insufficient memory allocated to the VM
Network latency between the VM and storage
Disk I/O contention from other VMs
Over-provisioning of vCPUs on the hypervisor
Correct; over-provisioned vCPUs cause contention and high ready time.
A company is designing a multi-cloud disaster recovery solution. They need to ensure RPO of 15 minutes and RTO of 1 hour for critical workloads. Which of the following should be implemented?
Asynchronous replication to a secondary cloud with a 30-minute delay
Synchronous replication to a standby environment in another cloud provider
Correct; synchronous replication provides low RPO and fast failover.
Pilot light environment that is started manually during a disaster
Daily backups to object storage in a different region
A cloud engineer notices that an application is running slower than expected. Monitoring shows that the CPU utilization is consistently below 30%, but memory usage is at 95%. Which of the following is the most likely cause of the performance issue?
Insufficient disk space for application logs
Insufficient memory causing swapping to disk
Correct; high memory usage leads to swapping, slowing performance.
Network bandwidth saturation
CPU contention due to overprovisioning
A cloud administrator is troubleshooting connectivity issues between two virtual networks in different regions. The virtual networks are peered, but instances cannot communicate. The administrator verifies that the peering status is 'Connected' and route tables appear correct. Which of the following should be checked next?
Network security group rules on the instances and subnets [CORRECT]
Correct; NSGs can block traffic even if VNet peering is established.
DNS resolution settings
Gateway subnet configuration
Service endpoint status
A company is implementing a cloud governance strategy. They need to ensure that all resources are tagged with cost center and environment, and any untagged resources are automatically remediated. Which of the following best practices should be applied?
Implement role-based access control to restrict resource creation
Set up budget alerts to notify when costs exceed thresholds
Create a manual audit process to check tags weekly
Use policy-as-code to enforce tagging and automatically apply tags to untagged resources
Correct; policy-as-code can enforce and auto-remediate tagging.
A cloud engineer is troubleshooting a VM that is experiencing high latency. The VM is hosted on a hypervisor with other VMs. Which TWO metrics should the engineer review to identify if resource contention is occurring?
Memory ballooning
Correct; memory ballooning indicates memory contention.
CPU ready time
Correct; high CPU ready time indicates CPU contention.
Network packet drops
Swap usage
Disk queue length
Want more Troubleshooting practice?
Practice this domainThe CV0-004 exam has 90 questions and must be completed in 90 minutes. The passing score is 750/1000.
Scenario questions on cloud architecture, deployment, security, operations, and troubleshooting across major cloud platforms. Some questions are performance-based (PBQs), asking you to complete tasks in a simulated environment.
The exam covers 5 domains: Cloud Architecture and Design, Deployment, Security, Operations and Support, Troubleshooting. Questions are weighted by domain — higher-weight domains appear more on your actual exam.
No. These are original exam-style practice questions written against the official CompTIA CV0-004 exam objectives. They are not copied from the real exam. Courseiva focuses on genuine understanding, not memorisation of braindumps.
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