CV0-004 Cloud Architecture and Design Practice Question
A company uses a public cloud PaaS service to run a custom application. They need to ensure the application can handle increased load without downtime. Which action should they take?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap is thinking that manual VM upgrades or moving to IaaS are necessary for scaling, when in fact PaaS provides auto-scaling as a managed feature.
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 auto-scaling for the PaaS service
In a PaaS environment, the cloud provider manages the underlying infrastructure, so the customer cannot manually upgrade VMs. Auto-scaling is a built-in feature of many PaaS services that automatically adjusts resources based on demand, ensuring the application can handle increased load without downtime. This is the most appropriate action.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Deploy a load balancer in front of the application
Why it's wrong here
A load balancer distributes traffic across existing instances but does not add capacity, so sustained load increases still saturate the backend. Load balancing is correct when the goal is resilience or even traffic distribution across already-sufficient instances.
- ✗
Move to IaaS to gain more control over scaling
Why it's wrong here
Migrating to IaaS removes the platform's automatic scaling and shifts capacity management onto the customer, adding downtime risk rather than preventing it. IaaS is the right choice when workloads demand OS-level control, custom networking or software the PaaS runtime cannot host.
- ✓
Configure auto-scaling for the PaaS service
Why this is correct
Configuring auto-scaling lets the PaaS platform add and remove compute instances automatically as demand rises, directly meeting the no-downtime requirement under increased load. Because the provider manages the underlying infrastructure, scaling occurs without manual intervention or service interruption, unlike vertical resizing, which typically needs a restart.
- ✗
Upgrade the underlying virtual machines manually
Why it's wrong here
PaaS abstracts the underlying VMs, so they cannot be upgraded manually; scaling is handled by the platform. It is tempting because manual VM resizing is the standard remedy for capacity issues in IaaS, where the customer owns the guest operating system and instance sizing.
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Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official CompTIA exam blueprint
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.