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CV0-004 Practice Question: A company uses a cloud load balancer to…
A company uses a cloud load balancer to distribute traffic to a group of web servers. After a recent update, some users report being redirected to a maintenance page when the application is actually available. What is the most likely cause?
⚠ Common exam trap
CompTIA often tests the distinction between health check misconfiguration and other common issues like SSL or DNS, so candidates may mistakenly choose an expired SSL certificate because they associate 'maintenance page' with security errors, but the correct cause is the load balancer's health check marking healthy instances as unhealthy.
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 load balancer health check is misconfigured and marking healthy instances as unhealthy.
The most likely cause is that the load balancer's health check is misconfigured, causing it to incorrectly mark healthy web servers as unhealthy. When all instances are marked unhealthy, the load balancer has no available targets and may route traffic to a fallback maintenance page or return an error. This explains why users see a maintenance page despite the application being available.
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 load balancer health check is misconfigured and marking healthy instances as unhealthy.
Why this is correct
A misconfigured health check probes the wrong port, path, or protocol, so the load balancer marks functioning web servers as unhealthy and removes them from the pool. Users hitting those instances are redirected to the maintenance page despite the application running, directly satisfying the stem's symptom of false unavailability after an update.
- ✗
The load balancer's SSL certificate has expired.
Why it's wrong here
An expired load balancer certificate causes browser TLS warnings or refused HTTPS connections, not a maintenance page. It is tempting because certificate expiry is a frequent post-update issue, but the redirect is generated by the load balancer's health check marking backends unhealthy, which is the actual mechanism to investigate.
- ✗
The DNS record for the load balancer has a short TTL.
Why it's wrong here
A short TTL only affects how quickly DNS changes propagate; it does not redirect users to a maintenance page. It is tempting because DNS caching issues commonly cause inconsistent user experiences after updates, but the redirect comes from the load balancer's health probe failing, not from record caching behaviour.
- ✗
The web servers are not configured with the same security group.
Why it's wrong here
Differing security groups affect which ports and sources reach each server, producing connection timeouts or refusals, not a maintenance page. It is tempting because inconsistent server configuration often causes uneven behaviour, but the maintenance redirect originates from health-check failures, so the check configuration is the real fault.
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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.