hardMultiple Choice
CV0-004 Practice Question: A company uses a cloud-based load balancer to…
A company uses a cloud-based load balancer to distribute traffic to a fleet of web servers. Users report intermittent timeouts. The administrator reviews the load balancer logs and notices that one backend server has a significantly higher error rate than the others. Which of the following is the BEST course of action?
⚠ Common exam trap
CompTIA often tests the misconception that adding more servers or increasing health check intervals will solve performance issues, but the trap here is that the problem is a specific faulty backend server, not a capacity or health check sensitivity issue, so the correct action is to isolate and troubleshoot that server.
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
✓
Drain connections to the unhealthy server and troubleshoot its configuration.
Draining connections from the unhealthy server allows the load balancer to stop sending new traffic to it while existing sessions complete, preventing further timeouts. Troubleshooting the server's configuration addresses the root cause of the high error rate, such as misconfigured web server software, resource exhaustion, or application bugs. This approach follows the principle of isolating and resolving the faulty component rather than masking the issue with workarounds.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Immediately add two more backend servers to distribute the load.
Why it's wrong here
Adding servers does not remove the failing backend from the pool, so the load balancer continues routing requests to the server producing the elevated error rate. Scaling out addresses capacity shortfalls, such as sustained CPU saturation across healthy nodes, not a single misbehaving member that should be drained or investigated first.
- ✓
Drain connections to the unhealthy server and troubleshoot its configuration.
Why this is correct
Draining gracefully stops new sessions reaching the failing backend while allowing in-flight requests to complete, then isolates it for configuration troubleshooting. This removes the error source without dropping active user connections, satisfying the requirement to resolve intermittent timeouts.
- ✗
Enable sticky sessions on the load balancer to maintain user sessions.
Why it's wrong here
Enabling sticky sessions pins each user to one backend, so traffic keeps reaching the failing server and timeouts persist. Sticky sessions exist to preserve session state across requests, and would be right if users lost carts or logins when requests hit different servers. Here the fix is removing the unhealthy backend from rotation.
- ✗
Increase the health check interval for all servers to reduce false positives.
Why it's wrong here
Lengthening the health check interval delays detection of the failing server, so it keeps receiving traffic and timing out. Health checks exist to remove unhealthy backends; the correct action addresses the single high-error server directly.
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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.