CV0-004 Cloud Architecture and Design Practice Question
A cloud architect is designing a disaster recovery strategy for a critical application with a Recovery Time Objective of 15 minutes and a Recovery Point Objective of 5 minutes. The secondary Region must be able to take over with minimal manual effort. Which strategy should the architect implement?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is choosing the cheapest backup-and-restore option, which cannot meet a five-minute recovery point or a fifteen-minute recovery time.
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
✓
A warm standby in the secondary Region with continuous data replication and automated failover orchestration.
A warm standby keeps a functional, scaled-down environment in the secondary Region with continuous replication, so data loss stays within the five-minute recovery point. Automated failover orchestration promotes resources and redirects traffic without lengthy manual steps, satisfying the fifteen-minute recovery time while costing less than a fully active second Region.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
A warm standby in the secondary Region with continuous data replication and automated failover orchestration.
Why this is correct
A warm standby keeps a scaled-down but functional copy of the environment running in the secondary Region, and continuous replication keeps data within the five-minute recovery point. Automated failover orchestration promotes the standby and redirects traffic with minimal human action, meeting the fifteen-minute recovery time. This balances cost and speed better than hotter or colder options.
- ✗
A pilot light strategy with only the database replicated and all application servers provisioned on demand during a disaster.
Why it's wrong here
A pilot light replicates data but leaves compute resources turned off, so a failover requires provisioning and configuring application servers before traffic can be served. That provisioning and boot time usually exceeds fifteen minutes and involves manual steps, which conflicts with the requirement for minimal manual effort and a fast recovery time.
- ✗
A backup-and-restore strategy that copies nightly snapshots to the secondary Region.
Why it's wrong here
Nightly snapshots imply a recovery point of up to 24 hours, far beyond the five-minute objective, and restoring infrastructure from snapshots typically takes hours, missing the fifteen-minute recovery time. Backup and restore is the cheapest strategy but is suited to workloads with much looser recovery targets, not this critical application.
- ✗
A multi-site active-active deployment with both Regions serving production traffic simultaneously.
Why it's wrong here
Active-active meets aggressive recovery targets, but it is the most expensive and complex option, requiring conflict-free data replication and global traffic management. The scenario asks for a secondary Region that can take over, implying a standby posture, so active-active exceeds the requirement and adds unnecessary cost and operational risk.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every CV0-004 question from scratch — 834 in total, each with an explanation and a wrong-answer breakdown. None are copied from real exams or dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
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.