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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
A longer connection timeout delays giving up on a stalled backend rather than detecting its unresponsiveness, so traffic keeps flowing to the failed VM. Timeouts are tuned for slow-but-valid responses; health checks, which probe the VM and remove it from rotation, address the actual failure.
- ✓
Configure health checks on the load balancer.
Why this is correct
Health checks probe each backend and remove failing instances from rotation, so an unresponsive VM stops receiving traffic. This directly addresses the stem's constraint that the load balancer kept sending traffic to the failed VM.
- ✗
Increase the number of VMs to five.
Why it's wrong here
Adding VMs increases capacity but does nothing to detect an unresponsive instance, so the load balancer keeps routing to it. Scaling out suits sustained load growth; the stem's failure is a node not being removed from rotation, which health checks provide.
- ✗
Change the load balancing algorithm to round-robin.
Why it's wrong here
Round-robin still distributes requests to every backend regardless of state, so the unresponsive VM continues receiving traffic and producing errors. This algorithm suits evenly matched, healthy pools; health checks are required to detect and withdraw a failing node before requests reach it.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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