CV0-004 Cloud Architecture and Design Practice Question
A company is migrating a legacy application to the cloud. The application has a stateful design and requires low-latency access to a shared file system. The application must scale horizontally to handle increased load. Which THREE of the following architectural changes should be recommended to enable horizontal scaling?
⚠ Common exam trap
The CV0-004 exam often tests the misconception that sticky sessions (session affinity) are a valid solution for scaling stateful applications, but in reality they create a hard dependency on a specific server, which directly contradicts the principles of horizontal 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
✓
Refactor the application to be stateless
Horizontal scaling requires that any instance can handle any request without depending on local state. By refactoring the application to be stateless, session data is externalized, allowing new instances to be added or removed without affecting ongoing transactions. This eliminates the coupling between a client and a specific server, which is essential for elastic scaling in cloud environments.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Increase the size of the existing virtual machines (vertical scaling)
Why it's wrong here
Vertical scaling does not enable horizontal scaling; it increases capacity of a single instance.
- ✗
Use sticky sessions (session affinity) on the load balancer
Why it's wrong here
Sticky sessions tie a user to a specific instance, making horizontal scaling less effective.
- ✓
Refactor the application to be stateless
Why this is correct
Statelessness enables any instance to handle any request, facilitating horizontal scaling.
- ✓
Implement a shared file system using Amazon EFS or Azure Files
Why this is correct
Shared file system provides consistent access to files across instances, needed for stateful data that must be shared.
- ✓
Move session state to a centralized database such as ElastiCache or DynamoDB
Why this is correct
Centralizing state allows instances to be added/removed without losing state.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every CV0-004 question from scratch — 977 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.