CV0-004 Deployment Practice Question
A cloud engineer is deploying a new application on AWS and needs to ensure that the deployment is highly available and can withstand the failure of a single Availability Zone. The application uses an Application Load Balancer (ALB) and an Auto Scaling group. Which two configurations should the engineer implement to meet these requirements? (Choose two.)
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap here is thinking that assigning Elastic IPs or using a single instance type improves availability, when the real requirements are multi-AZ distribution and cross-zone load balancing.
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
✓
Enable cross-zone load balancing on the ALB.
To achieve high availability and withstand an AZ failure, the Auto Scaling group must span multiple Availability Zones, and the ALB should have cross-zone load balancing enabled. These two configurations ensure that if one AZ becomes unavailable, the remaining AZs continue to serve traffic and the load balancer distributes requests evenly across all healthy targets.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Attach an Elastic IP address to each instance in the Auto Scaling group.
Why it's wrong here
Elastic IP addresses are static public IPs, but they are not used for high availability in an Auto Scaling group behind an ALB. Instances are ephemeral and should not have static IPs. Moreover, assigning EIPs does not contribute to AZ failure resilience. The ALB handles incoming traffic, and instances can use dynamic public IPs or none at all if in private subnets.
- ✓
Enable cross-zone load balancing on the ALB.
Why this is correct
Cross-zone load balancing allows the ALB to distribute traffic evenly across all registered targets in all enabled Availability Zones. Without it, traffic is distributed only to targets in the same AZ as the load balancer node, which can lead to uneven load and reduced fault tolerance. Enabling cross-zone load balancing ensures that if one AZ fails, the remaining AZs handle the full load.
- ✓
Configure the Auto Scaling group to span at least two Availability Zones.
Why this is correct
Spreading the Auto Scaling group across multiple Availability Zones ensures that if one AZ fails, instances in the other AZ continue to serve traffic. This is a fundamental practice for high availability. The load balancer will also distribute traffic to healthy instances in the remaining AZ. Without multi-AZ deployment, a single AZ failure would cause an outage.
- ✗
Set the Auto Scaling group to use a single instance type.
Why it's wrong here
Using a single instance type does not affect high availability across Availability Zones. It may simplify management, but it does not protect against AZ failures. In fact, using multiple instance types can improve resilience against instance type capacity issues. The key for AZ resilience is to distribute instances across multiple AZs, not to limit instance types.
- ✗
Configure the ALB to use a single Availability Zone for simplicity.
Why it's wrong here
Using a single Availability Zone for the ALB would create a single point of failure. If that AZ fails, the application becomes unavailable. High availability requires distributing resources across multiple AZs. The ALB itself should be enabled for multiple AZs, and the Auto Scaling group should also span multiple AZs. This option contradicts the goal of withstanding an AZ failure.
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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.