CV0-004 Cloud Architecture and Design Practice Question
This CV0-004 practice question tests your understanding of cloud architecture and design. The scenario asks you to isolate a root cause — eliminate options that address a different problem before choosing. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
A company runs a critical application on a cloud VM that must achieve a 99.99% monthly uptime SLA. The VM is deployed in a single availability zone. The current architecture has no redundancy. What is the most effective design change to meet the SLA requirement?
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Deploy the application across two availability zones with a load balancer
Option B is correct because deploying the application across two availability zones with a load balancer provides high availability by eliminating a single point of failure. A 99.99% monthly uptime SLA requires a design that can withstand an entire availability zone failure, which a single-zone deployment cannot achieve. The load balancer distributes traffic to healthy VMs, automatically failing over if one zone becomes unavailable, thus meeting the SLA target.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
✗
Schedule daily backups to a different region
Why it's wrong here
Backups protect data but do not provide automatic failover or maintain uptime during failure.
✓
Deploy the application across two availability zones with a load balancer
Why this is correct
Multi-AZ deployment eliminates single zone as a point of failure, enabling failover and meeting 99.99% uptime.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Upgrade the VM to a larger instance type for better reliability
Why it's wrong here
Instance type does not affect availability; larger instances have same failure risks.
✗
Add a second VM in the same availability zone with a load balancer
Why it's wrong here
A single zone can experience complete outage; two VMs in same zone still fail if zone fails.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
CompTIA often tests the distinction between high availability (redundancy across zones) and disaster recovery (backups to another region), leading candidates to mistakenly choose backup solutions for uptime requirements.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Cloud providers like AWS, Azure, and GCP define availability zones as isolated locations with independent power, cooling, and networking. A load balancer (e.g., AWS ALB, Azure Load Balancer) performs health checks using protocols like HTTP/HTTPS or TCP to route traffic only to healthy instances. In a multi-zone deployment, the load balancer can automatically shift traffic to the remaining zone if one fails, achieving the required 99.99% uptime (approximately 4.38 minutes of downtime per month).
KKey Concepts to Remember
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Find the constraint that changes the correct option.
Eliminate answers that are true in general but not in this case.
TExam Day Tips
→Watch for words such as best, first, most likely and least administrative effort.
→Review why wrong options are wrong, not only why the correct option is correct.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
How this comes up in practice
A small business has 20 workstations on the 192.168.1.0/24 network and one public IP from its ISP. The router uses PAT (NAT overload) so all 20 devices share one public address using different source ports. NAT questions test whether you understand the four address terms and which direction each translation applies.
What to study next
Got this wrong? Here's your next step.
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
Cloud Architecture and Design — This question tests Cloud Architecture and Design — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Deploy the application across two availability zones with a load balancer — Option B is correct because deploying the application across two availability zones with a load balancer provides high availability by eliminating a single point of failure. A 99.99% monthly uptime SLA requires a design that can withstand an entire availability zone failure, which a single-zone deployment cannot achieve. The load balancer distributes traffic to healthy VMs, automatically failing over if one zone becomes unavailable, thus meeting the SLA target.
What should I do if I get this CV0-004 question wrong?
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
What is the key concept behind this question?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Question Discussion
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