220-1101 Virtualization and Cloud Computing Practice Question
A company hosts a critical e-commerce application in a public cloud. The application is deployed across two availability zones in the same region. The cloud provider automatically monitors the health of the application in each zone and, if one zone becomes unavailable, all traffic is directed to the healthy zone without requiring any manual intervention. This setup BEST demonstrates which cloud characteristic?
⚠ Common exam trap
CompTIA often tests the distinction between high availability and elasticity by describing a scenario where resources scale automatically, but the trap here is that candidates confuse automatic traffic rerouting during a failure with scaling, when in fact it is a fault-tolerance mechanism, not a demand-based scaling action.
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 setup demonstrates high availability because the application is designed to remain accessible despite the failure of an entire availability zone. The cloud provider's automatic health monitoring and traffic rerouting ensure that if one zone goes down, all traffic is seamlessly directed to the healthy zone without manual intervention, minimizing downtime. This aligns with the core goal of high availability: eliminating single points of failure to maintain service continuity.
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 the correct answer because the described mechanism—automatic failover between redundant components—is precisely what defines HA systems. In practice, HA architectures replicate services across availability zones or active/passive nodes, and when a failure is detected, traffic is redirected to the standby component without manual intervention. This design minimizes downtime and ensures the e-commerce application remains accessible, aligning with the scenario’s emphasis on continuous availability rather than dynamic scaling or resource sharing.
- ✗
Elasticity
Why it's wrong here
Elasticity is incorrect because it focuses on matching resource capacity to fluctuating workload demand, such as scaling out virtual machines during traffic spikes and scaling back during lulls. While elastic systems may use autoscaling policies, this dynamic provisioning does not inherently provide failover between zones or automatic recovery from a component failure. The scenario describes a failover mechanism for continuity, which is a separate concern from demand-based scaling.
- ✗
Scalability
Why it's wrong here
Scalability is incorrect because it refers to the system’s ability to handle increased load by adding resources—whether vertical (more CPU/RAM) or horizontal (more instances)—to maintain performance as demand grows. It does not address unexpected failures or the automatic redirection of traffic to redundant components; a scalable system can still suffer downtime if a single node fails. The question is about fault tolerance and rapid recovery, which is the domain of high availability, not capacity expansion.
- ✗
Resource pooling
Why it's wrong here
Resource pooling is incorrect because it describes the cloud feature where physical computing resources are aggregated and dynamically assigned to multiple tenants via virtualization, enabling economies of scale and efficient utilization. This multi-tenant model is about shared infrastructure management, not about automatic failover or ensuring application continuity after a failure. The scenario’s mechanism—redundant components and failover—is an availability strategy, unrelated to how resources are pooled among customers.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
This 220-1101 question is part of Courseiva's 896-question bank — original exam-style content with full explanations and wrong-answer analysis, never real exam questions or exam dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
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.