CV0-004 Troubleshooting Practice Question
A cloud administrator is troubleshooting a web application hosted on a cloud virtual machine (VM) that is experiencing intermittent high latency during peak traffic hours. The application is deployed on a single VM instance with 4 vCPUs and 8 GB RAM, running a Linux OS. The VM is connected to a virtual network with a public IP. The administrator has verified that the application code is optimized and there are no memory leaks. CPU utilization remains below 50% during peaks, but network outbound traffic shows periodic spikes up to 500 Mbps. The VM's network interface is configured with a 1 Gbps bandwidth cap. The administrator suspects that the issue is related to network throttling or packet loss. Which of the following actions should the administrator take to resolve the issue?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers assume CPU or memory is the bottleneck because latency is intermittent, but the question explicitly states CPU is below 50% and memory is fine, so the real issue is the network bandwidth cap, which is a common cloud-specific limitation tied to instance size.
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
✓
Upgrade the VM to a larger instance size with higher network bandwidth cap (e.g., 2 Gbps).
The VM's network bandwidth cap of 1 Gbps is being saturated during peak traffic (spikes up to 500 Mbps, but with overhead and burst behavior, the cap can cause throttling and packet loss). Upgrading to a larger instance size with a higher network bandwidth cap (e.g., 2 Gbps) directly addresses the bottleneck by providing more headroom for outbound traffic, reducing latency caused by queueing and drops. The administrator has already ruled out CPU and memory issues, so the network cap is the likely culprit.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Increase the VM's vCPU count to 8 to improve processing capacity.
Why it's wrong here
Adding vCPUs addresses compute contention, but CPU utilisation stays below 50 percent during peaks, so processing capacity is not the bottleneck. Extra vCPUs would be correct when sustained CPU saturation, not network spikes, causes the latency.
- ✓
Upgrade the VM to a larger instance size with higher network bandwidth cap (e.g., 2 Gbps).
Why this is correct
The 1 Gbps interface cap is the bottleneck: periodic 500 Mbps outbound spikes plus burst overhead can saturate it, causing throttling and packet loss. A larger instance size raises the network bandwidth cap to 2 Gbps, removing that ceiling so peak traffic no longer queues at the interface.
- ✗
Configure the firewall to allow all traffic to reduce processing overhead.
Why it's wrong here
Allowing all traffic does not raise the 1 Gbps interface cap or address the 500 Mbps outbound spikes causing latency; firewall rule processing is not the bottleneck here. It is tempting because permissive rules genuinely reduce stateful inspection overhead in firewall-bound workloads, but the stem points to network throttling, not filtering.
- ✗
Enable DDoS protection on the public IP to filter malicious traffic.
Why it's wrong here
DDoS protection scrubs volumetric attack traffic, yet the stem shows legitimate outbound spikes to 500 Mbps against a 1 Gbps cap with no attack signature. It would be right when malicious floods saturate the public IP, not for this throughput pattern.
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JA
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.