hardMultiple Choice
CV0-004 Practice Question: A cloud administrator receives an alert that a…
A cloud administrator receives an alert that a virtual machine has unexpectedly shut down. The administrator checks the hypervisor logs and finds an entry "Out of memory: killed process" in the VM's OS logs. Which of the following is the most likely cause?
⚠ Common exam trap
CompTIA Cloud+ often tests the distinction between guest OS-level memory exhaustion (e.g., memory leak) and hypervisor-level memory management (e.g., overcommitment or ballooning), leading candidates to incorrectly attribute the OOM killer message to hypervisor issues rather than the application inside the VM.
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
✓
The VM has a memory leak in its application.
The log entry 'Out of memory: killed process' indicates that the Linux kernel's Out-Of-Memory (OOM) killer terminated a process to free memory. This is typically triggered when the system runs out of available memory, often due to a memory leak in an application consuming memory over time without releasing it. While hypervisor-level issues can cause VM instability, the specific OOM killer message points to a guest OS-level memory exhaustion problem, making a memory leak the most likely cause.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
The hypervisor memory overcommitment is too high.
Why it's wrong here
Hypervisor memory overcommitment causes host-level swapping and performance degradation, but the quoted message is the guest kernel's OOM killer terminating a process inside the VM. It is tempting because overcommitment does cause memory pressure, yet that pressure appears in hypervisor logs, not the guest OS log.
- ✓
The VM has a memory leak in its application.
Why this is correct
The hypervisor log shows the guest OS out-of-memory killer terminating a process, which points to memory exhaustion inside the VM rather than a host or hypervisor fault. An application memory leak steadily consumes guest RAM until the kernel kills processes, shutting the VM down.
- ✗
The VM's memory balloon driver is not installed.
Why it's wrong here
A missing balloon driver only prevents the host reclaiming guest memory; it does not make the guest kernel kill its own processes. It is tempting because ballooning is a genuine memory-reclamation mechanism, but the OOM killer message originates inside the guest, indicating the guest itself exhausted its allocated RAM.
- ✗
The VM's swap space is insufficient.
Why it's wrong here
Insufficient swap space would cause allocation failures or thrashing, but the OOM killer fired because the guest exhausted its configured RAM, not because it ran out of paging space. It is tempting since swap does relieve memory pressure, yet the message names memory, not swap exhaustion.
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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.