220-1101 Virtualization and Cloud Computing Practice Question
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?
⚠ Common exam trap
CompTIA often tests the distinction between high availability and disaster recovery by describing a scenario where standby resources are not actively serving traffic—candidates mistakenly choose 'high availability' because they see redundancy, but the powered-off state and need to start VMs clearly indicate disaster recovery, not HA.
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
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 analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
High availability
Why it's wrong here
High availability (HA) aims to minimize downtime by keeping redundant components active and ready to serve traffic, enabling failover within seconds. A cold standby, where the backup is powered off and must be automatically started, introduces a startup delay that violates HA's near-zero-downtime requirement. Thus, this scenario is not HA because failover is not immediate.
- ✗
Fault tolerance
Why it's wrong here
Fault tolerance requires the system to continue operating without any perceptible interruption when a component fails, typically using active-active or simultaneous redundant processing. A cold standby is not running concurrently, so there is a period of downtime while the backup boots and assumes control, meaning the system is not continuously available. This does not meet the strict continuous-operation standard of fault tolerance.
- ✓
Disaster recovery
Why this is correct
Disaster recovery (DR) is the coordinated process of restoring IT infrastructure and operations after a catastrophic event that disables the primary site. A cold standby with automatic startup is a common DR strategy because it provides a cost-effective way to recover from site-level failures, with the trade-off of a longer recovery time objective (RTO). The scenario explicitly describes an automatic startup after a disaster, aligning directly with DR's purpose.
- ✗
Scalability
Why it's wrong here
Scalability is the ability to dynamically add or remove resources (e.g., virtual machines, containers) to handle varying workloads, such as traffic spikes or seasonal demand. The described cold standby is a static backup that does not adjust capacity for performance; it only exists to recover functionality after a failure. Therefore, it is unrelated to scalability, which focuses on load growth, not disaster recovery.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This 220-1101 practice question is part of Courseiva's free CompTIA certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the 220-1101 exam.