CV0-004 Cloud Architecture and Design Practice Test 4 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company is deploying a web application that requires high availability across two geographically separate data centers. The application must be active in both sites simultaneously, and traffic must be load-balanced between them. Which architecture best meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Active-active architecture. Active-active architecture allows both sites to handle traffic simultaneously, providing load balancing and high availability. Active-passive would leave one site idle. Warm standby implies one site is not fully active. Fault tolerance (N+1) is a component-level concept, not a site-level architecture.

Answer

Active-passive architecture

Answer

Fault-tolerant N+1 architecture

Answer

Warm standby architecture

Question 2

Which cloud service model provides the customer with the most control over the operating system and software stack?

Accepted Answer

IaaS. IaaS provides virtualized computing resources where the customer manages the OS, middleware, and applications. PaaS abstracts the OS, SaaS provides complete applications, and FaaS abstracts the runtime entirely.

Answer

FaaS

Answer

SaaS

Answer

PaaS

Question 3

A cloud architect is designing a multi-region application on AWS. The application has a critical database that must tolerate the failure of an entire AWS region. Which strategy provides the lowest RTO while ensuring data consistency?

Accepted Answer

Active-passive with synchronous replication. Active-passive with synchronous replication provides the lowest RTO for regional failure because the standby region has up-to-date data and can be promoted quickly, though synchronous replication may impact performance. Active-active requires conflict resolution. Asynchronous replication has higher RPO. Multi-cloud adds complexity and latency.

Answer

Active-active with asynchronous replication

Answer

Active-passive with asynchronous replication

Answer

Multi-cloud active-active with eventual consistency

Question 4

A company wants to migrate a legacy application to the cloud. The application has a monolithic design and requires low-latency access to on-premises databases. The company needs to keep sensitive data on-premises due to regulatory compliance. Which cloud deployment model is most suitable?

Accepted Answer

Hybrid cloud. Hybrid cloud connects on-premises infrastructure with public cloud, allowing the legacy app to run in the cloud while maintaining low-latency access to on-premises databases and keeping sensitive data on-premises. Public cloud alone would not allow data residency. Private cloud is on-premises only, missing cloud benefits. Multi-cloud involves multiple public clouds, which does not address the on-premises requirement.

Answer

Public cloud

Answer

Multi-cloud

Answer

Private cloud

Question 5

An organization needs to store archival data for 7 years to meet compliance requirements. The data is rarely accessed, and retrieval time is not critical. Which cloud storage type is most cost-effective?

Accepted Answer

Archive storage. Archive storage (e.g., AWS Glacier, Azure Archive) is designed for long-term, infrequently accessed data at the lowest cost. Block storage is for VMs. Object storage is for frequent access. File storage is for shared file systems.

Answer

Block storage

Answer

File storage

Answer

Object storage

Question 6

A cloud engineer is designing a VPC in AWS for a three-tier web application. The web servers must be accessible from the internet, the application servers must be isolated from the internet but reachable by web servers, and the database servers must be isolated from both. How many subnets should be created, and which type should each be?

Accepted Answer

Three subnets: public for web, private for app, and private for database with stricter security groups. A three-tier architecture typically uses three subnets: public for web servers, private for application servers, and a database subnet (often private with additional restrictions). The database subnet is typically private, but the question asks for isolation, implying a separate subnet tier. A single subnet cannot provide isolation. Two subnets would combine two tiers, violating isolation.

Answer

Two subnets: public for web, private for app and database together

Answer

One public subnet for all tiers

Answer

Four subnets: two public for redundancy, two private for app and database

Question 7

A company runs a stateless web application on AWS EC2 instances behind an Application Load Balancer. The application experiences varying traffic patterns, with spikes on weekdays. The company wants to minimize costs while ensuring performance during spikes. Which combination of purchasing options and scaling strategy is most cost-effective?

Accepted Answer

Reserved instances for baseline capacity and on-demand instances for spikes. Using spot instances for the baseline capacity is risky because spot instances can be interrupted, causing instability. Reserved instances provide a discount for steady-state usage, and on-demand instances handle spikes. Auto-scaling with on-demand only would be more expensive. Spot instances for the entire workload are unreliable.

Answer

Spot instances for all capacity with a large buffer

Answer

On-demand instances for baseline and reserved instances for spikes

Answer

Reserved instances for baseline capacity and spot instances for spikes

Question 8

A company is deploying a global web application and wants to reduce latency for users around the world. The application serves static content (images, CSS) and dynamic API responses. Which combination of services should the architect use?

Accepted Answer

CDN for static content and a global load balancer with latency-based routing for dynamic content. CDN caches static content at edge locations, reducing latency. For dynamic content, a global load balancer with latency-based routing directs users to the closest region. DNS alone cannot reduce latency for dynamic content. A single load balancer does not provide global distribution.

Answer

CDN for all content without backend routing

Answer

A single load balancer in one region with a CDN

Answer

DNS round-robin for both static and dynamic content

Question 9

Which storage type is most appropriate for a shared file system that multiple virtual machines need to mount simultaneously with read/write access?

Accepted Answer

File storage. File storage (e.g., Amazon EFS, Azure Files) provides a shared file system that can be mounted by multiple VMs. Block storage is attached to a single VM. Object storage does not support file system semantics like locking. Archive storage is for long-term cold data.

Answer

Archive storage

Answer

Object storage

Answer

Block storage

Question 10

A company is designing a disaster recovery plan for its critical application. The application must be recovered within 4 hours (RTO) and can tolerate up to 1 hour of data loss (RPO). Which replication strategy is most cost-effective?

Accepted Answer

Asynchronous replication. Asynchronous replication meets the RPO of 1 hour (data loss up to 1 hour) and can be lower cost than synchronous replication, which requires high bandwidth. Synchronous replication would be more expensive and unnecessary. No replication would not meet RPO. Daily backups would exceed RPO.

Answer

No replication; rely on backups restored from archive

Answer

Synchronous replication

Answer

Daily snapshots with no replication

Question 11

An organization runs a batch processing job that runs for 2 hours every night. The job can tolerate interruptions and can resume from the last checkpoint. Which cloud purchasing option minimizes cost?

Accepted Answer

Spot instances. Spot instances (preemptible VMs) offer significant discounts and are suitable for fault-tolerant, interruptible workloads. Reserved instances are for steady-state usage. On-demand is more expensive. Dedicated hosts are for regulatory compliance or licensing.

Answer

Reserved instances

Answer

Dedicated hosts

Answer

On-demand instances

Question 12

A company wants to connect its on-premises data center to a public cloud provider with a dedicated, high-bandwidth, low-latency connection. The connection must be private and not traverse the internet. Which connectivity option should be used?

Accepted Answer

Direct Connect or ExpressRoute. Direct Connect (AWS) or ExpressRoute (Azure) provides a dedicated private connection from on-premises to the cloud. VPN uses the internet and has lower performance. Internet gateway is for internet access. VPC peering connects VPCs within the cloud.

Answer

Site-to-Site VPN

Answer

Internet gateway

Answer

VPC peering

Question 13

A company is designing a hybrid cloud architecture. They need to ensure high availability for a critical application. Which TWO of the following are best practices for achieving high availability in a hybrid cloud environment?

Accepted Answer

Implement an active-active architecture across on-premises and cloud. Using multiple availability zones within a region protects against data center failure. An active-active architecture ensures both on-premises and cloud are handling traffic, providing redundancy. Deploying in a single zone creates a single point of failure. Using only on-premises does not leverage cloud for HA. A single load balancer is a SPOF.

Answer

Rely solely on on-premises infrastructure with cloud as a backup

Answer

Use a single load balancer to route all traffic

Answer

Deploy the application in a single availability zone to reduce complexity

Question 14

A cloud architect is reviewing costs for a production environment. The environment uses a mix of EC2 instances and RDS databases. Which THREE of the following are effective cost optimization strategies?

Accepted Answer

Use reserved instances for baseline capacity. Reserved instances provide discounts for steady-state usage. Storage lifecycle policies move data to cheaper tiers over time. Rightsizing ensures resources match workload requirements, reducing waste. Using all SSD even for cold data is expensive. Running instances 24/7 when not needed increases costs unnecessarily.

Answer

Use all SSD storage for all data to maximize performance

Answer

Run all instances 24/7 to ensure availability

Question 15

A company is migrating a legacy application to the cloud. The application has a stateful design and requires low-latency access to a shared file system. The application must scale horizontally to handle increased load. Which THREE of the following architectural changes should be recommended to enable horizontal scaling?

Accepted Answer

Refactor the application to be stateless. Option C is correct because horizontal scaling requires that any instance can handle any request without depending on local state. By refactoring the application to be stateless, session data is externalized, allowing new instances to be added or removed without affecting ongoing transactions. This eliminates the coupling between a client and a specific server, which is essential for elastic scaling in cloud environments.

Answer

Increase the size of the existing virtual machines (vertical scaling)

Answer

Use sticky sessions (session affinity) on the load balancer