hardMultiple Choice
CAS-004 Practice Question: Uses AWS, Azure, and GCP for different workloads
An organization uses AWS, Azure, and GCP for different workloads. They want a single tool to manage infrastructure consistently across all providers. Which approach is most appropriate?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often mistakenly choose a single-vendor tool like CloudFormation or ARM templates for multi-cloud management. The correct approach uses a cloud-agnostic tool that abstracts provider APIs.
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
✓
Use Terraform with provider plugins
Terraform is an infrastructure-as-code tool that uses provider plugins to interact with the APIs of AWS, Azure, GCP, and hundreds of other services. This allows a single declarative configuration language (HCL) to manage resources consistently across all three cloud providers, making it the most appropriate choice for multi-cloud infrastructure management.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Use Terraform with provider plugins
Why this is correct
Terraform's provider plugins translate a single declarative configuration into each cloud's native API calls, so one workflow and state file manage AWS, Azure and GCP resources. That satisfies the requirement for consistent multi-provider infrastructure management without separate tooling per cloud.
- ✗
Use Azure Resource Manager templates
Why it's wrong here
Azure Resource Manager templates deploy only to Azure; they cannot target AWS or GCP resources, so they fail the multi-cloud requirement outright. They are tempting because ARM templates provide declarative, repeatable infrastructure-as-code within a single Azure subscription or management group — the right choice when all workloads live in Azure.
- ✗
Write provider-specific scripts in PowerShell
Why it's wrong here
PowerShell scripts remain provider-specific, so each cloud's cmdlets and authentication differ, leaving three separate codebases rather than one consistent tool. It is tempting because PowerShell excels at automating Windows and Azure administration, and would be the right choice for managing a single Microsoft-centric estate.
- ✗
Use AWS CloudFormation
Why it's wrong here
AWS CloudFormation templates deploy only AWS resources; it cannot provision Azure or GCP infrastructure, so it fails the multi-cloud requirement outright. It is tempting because CloudFormation is AWS's native infrastructure-as-code service, and it would be the right choice for standardising deployments confined entirely to a single AWS estate.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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