easyMultiple Choice
CV0-004 Practice Question: Refer to the exhibit
Network Topology
Refer to the exhibit. A cloud administrator runs this command on a VM. Which of the following is most likely causing the high 'wa' value?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common trap in CompTIA Cloud+ exams is to misinterpret a high 'wa' value as a symptom of high CPU load or memory pressure, when in fact it specifically indicates the CPU is waiting for disk I/O, not that it is busy processing.
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
✓
Disk I/O bottleneck
The 'wa' value in the output of the 'top' or 'vmstat' command represents the percentage of time the CPU spends waiting for I/O operations to complete. A high 'wa' value indicates that the CPU is frequently idle because it is waiting for data from storage devices, which is a classic symptom of a disk I/O bottleneck. This occurs when the storage subsystem cannot keep up with the read/write requests from the VM, causing the CPU to stall.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Disk I/O bottleneck
Why this is correct
The 'wa' column in top or vmstat measures CPU time spent waiting on I/O completion. A sustained high value indicates processes blocked on storage, so the disk subsystem is the bottleneck. Memory pressure or CPU saturation would raise different counters, such as 'si'/'so' or 'us'/'sy'.
- ✗
Network congestion
Why it's wrong here
Network congestion delays packets, appearing as retransmits or socket errors rather than the kernel's disk wait counter. It is tempting because remote storage traffic traverses the network, and network congestion would be correct if the exhibit showed latency on NFS or iSCSI mounts rather than local block devices.
- ✗
High CPU load
Why it's wrong here
CPU saturation raises user or system time, not the 'wa' percentage, which specifically measures time processes spend blocked on disk I/O. It is tempting because a busy processor often accompanies slow workloads, and high CPU load would be correct if the exhibit showed elevated user-time with low wait.
- ✗
Insufficient memory
Why it's wrong here
High I/O wait stems from storage subsystem latency, not memory pressure; insufficient RAM manifests as swapping, which the exhibit would show as rising swap usage alongside memory exhaustion. It is tempting because swapping does inflate wait, and insufficient memory would be correct if free memory were depleted and swap activity were climbing.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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