CV0-004 Troubleshooting Practice Question
A cloud administrator is troubleshooting slow performance on a managed relational database. Read queries against a read replica are fast, but write operations on the primary node take far longer than during testing. Monitoring shows the primary's CPU is moderate, disk queue depth is high, and provisioned IOPS are consistently saturated. Which action should the administrator take to resolve the bottleneck?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is focusing on CPU or instance class because the symptom is slowness, when the metrics already point to storage throughput saturation.
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 and throughput of the primary's storage volume to match the write workload.
High disk queue depth combined with saturated provisioned IOPS identifies the storage layer as the limiting factor for writes. Because write latency depends on durable commits to the volume, the fix is to raise provisioned IOPS and throughput so the primary can absorb the write rate. CPU is moderate and reads are healthy, so instance sizing, replica count, and zone placement are not the causes.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Move the primary node to a different availability zone to reduce storage latency.
Why it's wrong here
Relocating the primary does not change the provisioned IOPS limit of its volume, and the saturation is a capacity ceiling rather than a zone-specific latency anomaly. This action would cause a failover event and downtime without addressing the measured constraint. It substitutes an unverified infrastructure theory for the direct evidence of saturated provisioned throughput.
- ✓
Increase the provisioned IOPS and throughput of the primary's storage volume to match the write workload.
Why this is correct
Sustained high disk queue depth together with saturated provisioned IOPS points directly to a storage throughput ceiling, not to CPU or query logic. Write operations depend on durable storage commits, so they stall when the volume cannot absorb the write rate, while reads served from a replica with its own volume stay fast. Raising provisioned IOPS addresses the measured constraint.
- ✗
Increase the primary instance's memory so more of the working set can be cached.
Why it's wrong here
The evidence shows moderate CPU and saturated disk IOPS, which indicates the bottleneck is storage throughput rather than buffer pool misses. Additional memory may help read-heavy workloads, but writes must still be flushed durably to the volume. This change would not raise the IOPS ceiling and would leave the high disk queue depth unresolved.
- ✗
Add another read replica to distribute the write load across more nodes.
Why it's wrong here
Read replicas serve read traffic only and do not participate in write processing on the primary. Adding one increases read capacity, which the scenario shows is already adequate, and leaves the saturated write path unchanged. This option misunderstands replication topology and would add cost without relieving the measured storage bottleneck on the primary.
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JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official CompTIA exam blueprint
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.