CV0-004 Cloud Architecture and Design Practice Test 5 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A company wants to migrate its on-premises workloads to the cloud but must keep sensitive customer data on-premises due to regulatory compliance. Which cloud deployment model should they use?

Accepted Answer

Hybrid cloud. A hybrid cloud connects on-premises infrastructure to public cloud services, allowing sensitive data to remain on-premises while leveraging the public cloud for other workloads.

Answer

Public cloud

Answer

Multi-cloud

Answer

Private cloud

Question 2

A cloud architect is designing a web application that must remain available during a full region outage. They plan to deploy identical resources in two separate geographical regions. Which high availability architecture is described?

Accepted Answer

Active-active. Active-active means both regions handle traffic simultaneously, providing load sharing and failover. This matches deploying identical resources in two regions.

Answer

Cold standby

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Active-passive

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Warm standby

Question 3

A company uses a public cloud IaaS model to host a database. They want to ensure the database remains available if an entire availability zone fails. Which configuration would provide the highest availability with automatic failover?

Accepted Answer

Deploy the database with a stand-by replica in a different availability zone using synchronous replication. Deploying a database with a stand-by replica in a different availability zone using synchronous replication ensures that all committed transactions are written to both the primary and the stand-by before acknowledging the client. This provides automatic failover with zero data loss (RPO=0) and high availability, as the stand-by replica can immediately take over if the entire availability zone fails.

Answer

Use a single database instance with automated snapshots to a different region

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Deploy the database in a single availability zone with multiple EC2 instances

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Use a read replica in a different region with asynchronous replication

Question 4

Which cloud service model provides the customer with the highest level of control over the operating system and middleware?

Accepted Answer

IaaS. IaaS provides virtualized computing resources where the customer manages the OS, middleware, and applications, offering the highest control among the three main service models.

Answer

PaaS

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FaaS

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SaaS

Question 5

A company is running a stateless web application on a public cloud. They expect traffic to spike during certain hours. Which scaling strategy would be most cost-effective and efficient?

Accepted Answer

Horizontal scaling using auto-scaling groups based on CPU utilization. Horizontal scaling (adding more instances) combined with auto-scaling based on metrics like CPU usage allows the application to handle spikes cost-effectively without over-provisioning.

Answer

Using a larger instance type and scheduling scaling actions

Answer

Pre-provisioning double capacity permanently

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Vertical scaling with manual adjustments before anticipated spikes

Question 6

A cloud architect is designing a VPC with three tiers: web, application, and database. Which subnet design provides the best security posture?

Accepted Answer

Web in public subnet, app and database in private subnets with appropriate routing. It follows the principle of least privilege and network segmentation. Placing the web tier in a public subnet allows it to receive internet traffic, while the application and database tiers reside in private subnets with no direct internet access. This design ensures that only the web tier is exposed, and the database is isolated, accessible only via the application tier through controlled routing, significantly reducing the attack surface.

Answer

Web and app in public subnets, database in private subnet

Answer

All tiers in private subnets with a VPN

Answer

All tiers in the same public subnet with security groups

Question 7

A company is using AWS and wants to minimize egress costs for data transferred out to the internet. Which strategy would be most effective?

Accepted Answer

Implement a CDN to cache content at edge locations. Using a CDN caches content at edge locations, reducing the amount of data transferred directly from the origin to users, thus lowering egress costs.

Answer

Use a VPN to encrypt traffic

Answer

Migrate to a different region with lower egress prices

Answer

Use a larger instance type to reduce data transfer

Question 8

A company uses a public cloud PaaS service to run a custom application. They need to ensure the application can handle increased load without downtime. Which action should they take?

Accepted Answer

Configure auto-scaling for the PaaS service. Configuring auto-scaling for the PaaS service allows it to automatically add instances based on load, ensuring high availability without manual intervention.

Answer

Deploy a load balancer in front of the application

Answer

Move to IaaS to gain more control over scaling

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Upgrade the underlying virtual machines manually

Question 9

Which storage type is most suitable for hosting a shared file system accessible by multiple virtual machines in a cloud environment?

Accepted Answer

File storage. File storage (option D) is the correct choice because it provides a hierarchical, shared file system that multiple virtual machines can mount simultaneously using standard protocols like NFS (Network File System) or SMB/CIFS. This allows concurrent read/write access with file-level locking, making it ideal for shared workloads such as home directories, content management, or collaboration tools in a cloud environment.

Answer

Archive storage

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Object storage

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Block storage

Question 10

A cloud engineer is designing a disaster recovery plan with an RTO of 2 hours and RPO of 15 minutes. Which strategy best meets these requirements?

Accepted Answer

Warm standby with continuous replication. A warm standby with replication keeps a scaled-down copy running, allowing recovery within hours and data loss limited to minutes.

Answer

Pilot light with hourly snapshots

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Cold standby with daily backups

Answer

Active-active across regions

Question 11

A company uses AWS and Azure to run identical workloads for redundancy. They want to simplify management by using a single set of tools across both clouds. Which architectural approach should they consider?

Accepted Answer

Multi-cloud using a cloud-agnostic orchestration tool. Multi-cloud with a cloud-agnostic abstraction layer (e.g., using Terraform or Kubernetes) allows managing resources across providers with a unified toolset.

Answer

Use each provider's native management tools

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Single cloud migration to one provider

Answer

Hybrid cloud using VPN between AWS and Azure

Question 12

A cloud architect is choosing a compute pricing model for a batch processing job that runs for 2 hours every night. The job can be interrupted. Which option is most cost-effective?

Accepted Answer

Spot instances. Spot instances are the most cost-effective option because the batch processing job is fault-tolerant (can be interrupted) and runs for a fixed, short duration (2 hours nightly). Spot instances offer significant discounts (often 60-90% off on-demand pricing) by leveraging unused cloud capacity, which can be reclaimed with a 2-minute warning. This aligns perfectly with the workload's tolerance for interruption and its predictable but non-critical schedule.

Answer

Reserved instances for 1 year

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On-demand instances

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Dedicated hosts

Question 13

A company is migrating a legacy stateful application to the cloud. The application currently runs on a single server and stores session data locally. To enable horizontal scaling, which two design changes should the architect recommend? (Select TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Move session state to a shared database or cache. To horizontally scale a stateful application, session data must be externalized (e.g., to a database or cache) and the application should be designed to be stateless so any instance can handle any request.

Answer

Add more storage to the existing instance

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Implement sticky sessions on the load balancer

Answer

Use a larger instance type for the application server

Question 14

A cloud architect is designing a multi-tier application on a public cloud. The application must be highly available and fault-tolerant within a single region. Which three items should be included in the architecture? (Select THREE.)

Accepted Answer

Deploy resources in multiple availability zones. High availability within a region requires distributing resources across availability zones, using load balancers for traffic distribution, and implementing health checks for automatic failover.

Answer

Use a single instance in one availability zone

Answer

Use a single database instance without replication

Question 15

A company wants to reduce its cloud storage costs for infrequently accessed data that must be retained for 7 years. Which two storage lifecycle policies should they implement? (Select TWO.)

Accepted Answer

Transition data to a lower-cost infrequent access tier after 30 days. Transitioning data to a lower-cost infrequent access tier after 30 days aligns with the requirement to reduce costs for infrequently accessed data. This lifecycle policy moves objects from a standard tier to a cheaper tier (e.g., Amazon S3 Standard-IA or Azure Cool Blob Storage) after a specified period, reducing storage costs while maintaining low-latency retrieval. Option D is correct because archiving data to cold storage after 1 year (e.g., Amazon S3 Glacier or Azure Archive Blob Storage) further reduces costs for data that is rarely accessed but must be retained for 7 years, as cold storage offers the lowest storage cost at the expense of longer retrieval times.

Answer

Move data from object storage to block storage after 30 days

Answer

Use reserved capacity for object storage

Answer

Delete all data older than 1 year