CV0-004 Operations and Support Practice Question
A cloud operations team is using AWS and needs to monitor the CPU utilization of a fleet of Amazon EC2 instances. The team wants to receive an alert when the average CPU utilization exceeds 80% for 5 consecutive minutes. Which AWS service should they use to create the alarm?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers confuse AWS CloudTrail, which logs API activity, with Amazon CloudWatch, which monitors performance metrics and triggers alarms.
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
✓
Amazon CloudWatch
Amazon CloudWatch is the AWS service designed for monitoring metrics and creating alarms. It collects CPU utilization data from EC2 instances and allows alarms to be configured with thresholds and evaluation periods. Setting an alarm for average CPU utilization greater than 80% for 5 consecutive minutes meets the team's requirement to be alerted when the condition is met.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
AWS CloudTrail
Why it's wrong here
AWS CloudTrail records API activity and account events for auditing and compliance purposes. It does not collect performance metrics like CPU utilization or provide alarm functionality. While it can track who launched an instance, it cannot trigger an alert based on CPU thresholds. Therefore, it is not the correct service for creating a CPU utilization alarm in this scenario.
- ✗
AWS Trusted Advisor
Why it's wrong here
AWS Trusted Advisor provides recommendations based on best practices in areas like cost optimization, security, and fault tolerance. It does not monitor real-time performance metrics such as CPU utilization or provide customizable alarms. While it may flag underutilized instances, it cannot alert when CPU exceeds a specific threshold for a defined period, so it is not suitable for this scenario.
- ✓
Amazon CloudWatch
Why this is correct
Amazon CloudWatch collects and tracks metrics such as CPU utilization for EC2 instances. It allows the creation of alarms that trigger when a metric breaches a threshold for a specified number of evaluation periods. In this scenario, an alarm can be set to fire when average CPU utilization exceeds 80% for 5 consecutive minutes, directly meeting the team's requirement for monitoring and alerting.
- ✗
AWS Config
Why it's wrong here
AWS Config evaluates and records resource configurations against desired policies. It is used for compliance and configuration change tracking, not for performance metric monitoring. It cannot monitor CPU utilization or trigger alarms based on metric thresholds. Therefore, it does not meet the requirement to alert when CPU utilization exceeds 80% for 5 minutes.
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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.