220-1101 Virtualization and Cloud Computing Practice Question
A systems administrator is planning to deploy a critical application to the cloud. The application requires dedicated physical hardware to meet compliance standards. The administrator also needs full control over the operating system, including kernel configurations. Which cloud service model BEST meets these requirements?
⚠ Common exam trap
CompTIA often tests the misconception that IaaS always provides full control over the OS and hardware, but the trap here is that only dedicated hosts (a specific IaaS variant) guarantee physical hardware isolation and kernel-level access, whereas standard shared IaaS still uses hypervisor-level abstraction that may not meet strict compliance requirements.
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
✓
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) with dedicated hosts
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) with dedicated hosts is the correct choice because it provides the administrator with dedicated physical hardware, ensuring compliance with standards that require no multi-tenancy, and full control over the operating system, including kernel configurations. Unlike shared IaaS, dedicated hosts guarantee that the underlying physical server is not shared with other tenants, meeting strict compliance and performance requirements.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) with dedicated hosts
Why this is correct
IaaS with dedicated hosts is the only model that grants the administrator full, exclusive control over the physical hardware and the OS running on it. With dedicated hosts, a physical server is allocated solely to that customer, ensuring hardware-level isolation for compliance, avoiding neighbor-tenant interference, and enabling unrestricted kernel customization—such as loading custom modules, tuning kernel scheduling, or applying specialized drivers—that requires direct access to the OS and hardware.
- ✗
Platform as a Service (PaaS)
Why it's wrong here
PaaS abstracts away the underlying OS and infrastructure to provide a managed runtime and middleware, typically for web application deployment. The administrator can configure the application environment only through vendor-provided settings and cannot modify the OS kernel, load kernel modules, or manage the host OS. Additionally, PaaS offerings are inherently multi-tenant; the provider shares computing resources across many customers, so dedicated physical hardware is not offered, which fails to meet the stated compliance and kernel-configuration requirements.
- ✗
Software as a Service (SaaS)
Why it's wrong here
SaaS delivers a fully functional application (e.g., email, CRM) where the provider manages everything from the application down to the OS and physical hardware. The customer has no administrative or configuration access to the OS, kernel, or host, making any kernel-level tuning or custom driver installation impossible. Furthermore, standard SaaS contracts do not include dedicated physical hosts; the underlying infrastructure is shared and provider-controlled, so the compliance requirement for physical hardware isolation cannot be satisfied in this model.
- ✗
Function as a Service (FaaS)
Why it's wrong here
FaaS—serverless computing—allows the user to deploy discrete pieces of code without provisioning or managing servers. The provider automatically executes the code in short-lived, ephemeral containers or microVMs, abstracting the OS, the kernel, and the physical hardware entirely. The user cannot access or configure the kernel, and the execution environment is shared and transient, so there is no possibility of dedicated physical hardware or persistent OS-level control, making FaaS invalid for a critical application that needs kernel customization and hardware isolation.
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Key term
Operating system
An operating system (OS) is the core software that manages a computer's hardware and software resources, providing common services for computer programs.
Key term
Infrastructure as a Service
Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS) is a cloud computing model that provides on-demand virtualized computing resources over the internet, such as virtual machines, storage, and networking, instead of owning and maintaining physical hardware.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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