easyMultiple ChoiceObjective-mapped
CV0-004 Practice Question: A company recently migrated its on-premises…
A company recently migrated its on-premises e-commerce application to a public cloud using lift-and-shift. After the migration, users report that the application is slower than before. The application consists of a web server, an application server, and a database server, all deployed on separate virtual machines. The cloud architecture uses the same instance sizes as the on-premises servers. The cloud administrator notices that the database server's disk I/O latency is higher than expected. What is the most likely cause of the performance degradation?
⚠ Common exam trap
CompTIA often tests the misconception that 'cloud performance is always better' or that network latency is the default culprit, but the trap here is that disk storage tiering (HDD vs. SSD) is a common oversight in lift-and-shift migrations, and candidates may incorrectly blame network or compute resources instead of the storage layer.
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
✓
The database server is using standard HDD storage instead of SSD.
The database server's disk I/O latency is higher than expected because the lift-and-shift migration likely retained the same storage type as on-premises, but the cloud environment's standard HDD (hard disk drive) storage has significantly lower IOPS and higher latency compared to SSD (solid-state drive) storage. In a public cloud, standard HDD is optimized for sequential workloads and infrequent access, not for the random I/O patterns typical of a database server, causing performance degradation. The administrator should have provisioned SSD-backed storage (e.g., AWS gp3 or Azure Premium SSD) for the database VM to match or exceed on-premises performance.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
The database server is using standard HDD storage instead of SSD.
Why this is correct
HDD has higher latency, impacting database performance.
- ✗
The cloud provider's network has high latency.
Why it's wrong here
Cloud networks are typically low latency; issue is specific to database disk.
- ✗
The application server is not load-balanced.
Why it's wrong here
Load balancing affects distribution of traffic, not database I/O latency.
- ✗
The web server has too many vCPUs allocated.
Why it's wrong here
Excess vCPUs generally don't cause higher latency.
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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.