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CV0-004 Practice Question: A company runs a web application on three virtual…
A company runs a web application on three virtual machines behind a load balancer. During a traffic spike, one VM becomes unresponsive. The load balancer continues sending traffic to it, causing errors. Which configuration change would prevent this issue in the future?
⚠ Common exam trap
CompTIA often tests the misconception that simply adding more servers or changing the algorithm solves availability issues, when in fact without health checks the load balancer has no mechanism to detect and avoid failed instances.
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 health checks on the load balancer.
Health checks allow the load balancer to periodically probe the status of each backend VM (e.g., via HTTP GET or TCP SYN). If a VM fails a configurable number of consecutive checks, the load balancer automatically marks it as unhealthy and stops routing traffic to it, preventing errors during a spike. This is the standard mechanism in AWS ELB, Azure Load Balancer, and HAProxy to detect and isolate failed instances.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Set a longer connection timeout on the load balancer.
Why it's wrong here
Timeout affects idle connections, not health detection.
- ✓
Configure health checks on the load balancer.
Why this is correct
Health checks automatically remove unhealthy VMs from the pool.
- ✗
Increase the number of VMs to five.
Why it's wrong here
More VMs help distribute load but do not prevent traffic to a failed VM.
- ✗
Change the load balancing algorithm to round-robin.
Why it's wrong here
This does not check VM health.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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