220-1101 Virtualization and Cloud Computing Practice Question
A company hosts a critical web application on a public cloud provider. The architecture uses virtual server instances in two geographically separate data centers (regions). A global load balancer monitors the health of each region and distributes incoming user traffic. If an entire region becomes unavailable due to a natural disaster, the load balancer automatically redirects all traffic to the remaining healthy region. This design is intended to meet a specific business requirement. Which cloud characteristic does this architecture BEST demonstrate?
⚠ Common exam trap
The 220-1101 exam often tests the distinction between high availability (redundancy and failover) and elasticity (scaling), so candidates mistakenly choose elasticity because they associate 'automatic' with scaling rather than with failover.
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
✓
High availability
This architecture demonstrates high availability because it uses redundant virtual server instances across two geographically separate regions with a global load balancer that performs automatic failover. When an entire region becomes unavailable due to a disaster, the load balancer detects the health check failure (e.g., HTTP 503 or TCP timeout) and redirects all traffic to the remaining healthy region, ensuring the application remains accessible. This design minimizes downtime and meets the business requirement for continuous operation despite regional outages.
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 this is correct
High availability is a system design principle that ensures an application remains operational during failures by eliminating single points of failure and implementing automatic failover. In this scenario, deploying the web application across multiple regions with automatic failover allows traffic to be redirected to a healthy region if one becomes unavailable, minimizing downtime. This directly addresses the requirement for resilience against regional outages, which is the essence of high availability.
- ✗
Elasticity
Why it's wrong here
Elasticity is the ability of a cloud environment to scale computing resources — such as adding or removing virtual machines or containers — dynamically in response to fluctuating workload demand. The scenario describes a disaster scenario where a region fails, not a change in traffic volume or resource utilization; therefore, elasticity would not keep the application online during a regional outage. Even if the application is scaled out, it would still be unavailable if the region hosting it goes down unless it is also deployed elsewhere and can fail over.
- ✗
Resource pooling
Why it's wrong here
Resource pooling is a fundamental cloud characteristic where the provider's physical and virtual resources are aggregated and shared among multiple customers, using a multi-tenant model. The scenario does not mention anything about sharing infrastructure with other tenants, nor does it involve the provider's ability to dynamically assign resources to meet demand. Instead, the focus is on maintaining availability across geographically separate regions, which is unrelated to how resources are pooled.
- ✗
Measured service
Why it's wrong here
Measured service means that cloud usage is metered and monitored, enabling pay-per-use billing and providing transparency into resource consumption for both the provider and the customer. The scenario is about keeping a web application available despite a regional failure; it says nothing about metering, monitoring costs, or usage-based billing. Therefore, while measured service is a cloud attribute, it does not satisfy the uptime and failover requirement described.
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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.