easyMultiple Choice
CV0-004 Practice Question: Needs to ensure that a web application can scale…
A cloud engineer needs to ensure that a web application can scale out automatically during traffic spikes. Which design best practice should be implemented?
⚠ Common exam trap
CompTIA often tests the distinction between vertical scaling (scaling up) and horizontal scaling (scaling out), where candidates mistakenly choose a larger instance size or a single powerful VM because they think 'more resources' is the solution, ignoring the need for automatic, elastic scaling and fault tolerance.
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
✓
Configure an auto scaling group with a load balancer.
An auto scaling group combined with a load balancer automatically adds or removes VM instances based on predefined metrics (e.g., CPU utilization, request count), ensuring the web application scales out horizontally during traffic spikes without manual intervention. This aligns with cloud elasticity best practices for handling variable workloads.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Deploy a larger instance size.
Why it's wrong here
A larger instance raises the ceiling of a single node, which is vertical scaling; it adds no automatic capacity when demand exceeds that node. It is tempting because resizing is a one-step fix for steady load, but scale-out requires an autoscaling group or orchestrator adding instances.
- ✗
Use a single powerful VM with more vCPUs.
Why it's wrong here
Adding vCPUs to one VM is vertical scaling, bounded by that machine's maximum size and still a single point of failure. It is tempting because a beefier host genuinely helps a monolithic database that cannot be distributed, but the stem demands automatic scale-out across instances.
- ✗
Manually provision additional VMs during peak times.
Why it's wrong here
Manual provisioning depends on an engineer noticing the spike and acting, so capacity lags demand and cannot be described as automatic. It is tempting because it gives precise control and suits predictable, scheduled peaks, yet the stem requires elastic response without human intervention.
- ✓
Configure an auto scaling group with a load balancer.
Why this is correct
An auto scaling group provisions and terminates instances based on demand metrics, while the load balancer distributes incoming traffic across those instances. Together they satisfy the stem's requirement for automatic scale-out during traffic spikes, since the group adjusts capacity horizontally and the balancer ensures new instances receive traffic immediately.
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 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.