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CV0-004 Practice Question: A cloud administrator is troubleshooting a…
A cloud administrator is troubleshooting a performance issue with a relational database hosted on a cloud provider. The application team reports that queries are taking much longer than usual. The administrator checks the database monitoring dashboard and sees that the queries per second are within normal ranges, but the average query latency has doubled. The database is running on a VM with 4 vCPUs and 16 GB RAM. The storage type is SSD-backed General Purpose (GP2) with provisioned 3000 IOPS. The administrator notices that the Disk I/O Wait metric is consistently above 20%. What should the administrator do to improve query performance?
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
✓
Increase the provisioned IOPS or upgrade to a higher-performance storage class like Provisioned IOPS SSD.
High I/O Wait indicates that the CPU is spending significant time waiting for disk I/O to complete. Increasing storage IOPS or switching to a higher-performance storage class (e.g., Provisioned IOPS SSD) will reduce I/O latency and improve query performance. Option B directly addresses the bottleneck.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Shrink the database by archiving old data.
Why it's wrong here
Archiving might help long-term but is not an immediate solution for ongoing high I/O wait.
- ✓
Increase the provisioned IOPS or upgrade to a higher-performance storage class like Provisioned IOPS SSD.
Why this is correct
Raising IOPS reduces disk queue depth and I/O wait, directly addressing the performance issue.
- ✗
Add more memory to the VM to increase the database cache.
Why it's wrong here
While more cache can reduce disk reads, the immediate symptom is high I/O wait, which indicates storage throughput is insufficient.
- ✗
Add more vCPUs to the database VM.
Why it's wrong here
More vCPUs will not help if the bottleneck is I/O; CPU utilization is likely low due to waiting.
Quick reference
AWS S3 Storage Class Comparison
| Storage Class | Min Duration | Retrieval | Use Case |
|---|---|---|---|
| S3 Standard | None | Immediate | Frequently accessed data |
| S3 Standard-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Infrequent access, rapid retrieval |
| S3 One Zone-IA | 30 days | Immediate | Non-critical infrequent data |
| S3 Intelligent-Tiering | None | Immediate–hours | Unknown or changing access patterns |
| S3 Glacier Instant | 90 days | Milliseconds | Archive with instant retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Flexible | 90 days | Minutes–hours | Archive, flexible retrieval |
| S3 Glacier Deep Archive | 180 days | Hours | Long-term compliance archive |
Go deeper
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This CV0-004 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 CV0-004 exam.