220-1101 Virtualization and Cloud Computing Practice Question
A company hosts its e-commerce website on a public cloud platform. During a marketing campaign, the website experiences a sudden, unplanned spike in traffic. The cloud environment automatically provisions additional virtual servers to handle the load and later decommissions them when traffic returns to normal. This capability is BEST described by which cloud computing characteristic?
⚠ Common exam trap
CompTIA often tests elasticity by contrasting it with high availability, where candidates mistakenly think that adding servers for load handling is the same as ensuring uptime, but elasticity is about scaling, not redundancy.
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
✓
Elasticity
Elasticity is the cloud computing characteristic that enables automatic scaling of resources up or down based on demand. In this scenario, the cloud platform provisions additional virtual servers during a traffic spike and decommissions them when traffic normalizes, which is the precise definition of elasticity. This differs from high availability, which focuses on uptime through redundancy, not dynamic scaling.
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 is a design goal focused on system uptime and continuity of service, typically achieved through redundant components, failover clusters, and load balancing. While such architectures can tolerate component failure to keep the application running, they do not inherently adjust capacity in response to varying traffic levels. In this scenario, the website needs to add or remove servers dynamically based on demand spikes, which is a scaling activity, not a static redundancy measure.
- ✓
Elasticity
Why this is correct
Elasticity is the defining cloud capability that automatically provisions and releases compute resources to match real-time workload demand, often governed by autoscaling policies driven by metrics like CPU utilization or request count. During a traffic spike, an elastic platform would launch additional virtual machines or containers to distribute the load, and terminate them when demand subsides, thereby aligning cost and performance. This dynamic scaling up and down is exactly what the e-commerce website requires, making it the correct answer.
- ✗
Fault tolerance
Why it's wrong here
Fault tolerance is the ability of a system to continue operating correctly in the presence of hardware failures, such as disk, network, or power loss, typically by having redundant components that assume the workload seamlessly. It is concerned with resilience against failures, not with handling increased traffic; even a fault-tolerant system would be overwhelmed by a sudden surge unless it also has elasticity. The scenario describes scaling to meet demand, whereas fault tolerance addresses maintaining operation during a failure, so it does not apply.
- ✗
Disaster recovery
Why it's wrong here
Disaster recovery involves predefined plans and technologies to restore IT services after a significant, often catastrophic event like a flood, earthquake, or full-site outage, focusing on recovery point objectives (RPO) and recovery time objectives (RTO). It typically encompasses data backups, replicated storage, and standby infrastructure in alternative locations, but this is a reactive process after a failure, not a continuous, automatic adjustment of resources based on current load. The e-commerce website's temporary provisioning of servers to handle a spike is a proactive elasticity measure, not a recovery procedure.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)
Key term
Software as a Service
Software as a Service (SaaS) is a cloud computing model where users access software applications over the internet on a subscription basis, without installing or maintaining the software locally.
Key term
Anything As A Service
A model where you rent any IT resource or service over the internet instead of owning it.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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