hardMultiple Select
CV0-004 Practice Question: Which THREE of the following are key…
Which THREE of the following are key considerations when designing a cloud-native application for high availability? (Select exactly three.)
⚠ Common exam trap
CompTIA often tests the misconception that high availability requires synchronous replication or multithreading, when in fact these can introduce tight coupling and single points of failure; the trap is confusing performance optimization with architectural resilience.
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
✓
Implement loose coupling between services
Option C is correct because loose coupling between services—typically achieved through asynchronous messaging (e.g., queues, event buses) or well-defined APIs—ensures that the failure of one service does not cascade to others, which is fundamental to high availability in cloud-native designs. Option D is correct because stateless application components store no session data locally, allowing any instance to handle any request and enabling failed instances to be replaced seamlessly by load balancers or orchestrators. Option E is correct because designing for horizontal scaling with auto-scaling groups lets the application add or remove instances dynamically in response to demand or instance failure, maintaining availability across Availability Zones. Option A is not a key HA consideration because multithreading is an implementation-level concurrency technique, not a cloud-native availability pattern, and can even introduce complexity or contention. Option B is not appropriate because synchronous replication can increase latency and couple database nodes tightly, whereas asynchronous or quorum-based replication is generally preferred for resilient, distributed cloud databases.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Use multithreading for all components
Why it's wrong here
Multithreading raises per-instance throughput but does not survive instance or zone failure, so it adds no redundancy across availability zones. It is tempting because concurrency tuning genuinely improves performance and resource utilisation within a single node, which is a valid optimisation goal but not a high-availability mechanism.
- ✗
Use synchronous replication for databases
Why it's wrong here
Synchronous replication couples write latency to the slowest replica and can stall the primary when a node degrades, undermining availability during failure. It is tempting because it guarantees zero data loss with strong consistency, making it the right pick where RPO must be zero and latency budgets allow.
- ✓
Implement loose coupling between services
Why this is correct
Loose coupling lets each service fail or scale independently, so one component's outage does not cascade across the application. This directly supports the high availability goal by containing faults and permitting graceful degradation rather than total service loss.
- ✓
Use stateless application components
Why this is correct
Stateless components hold no session data locally, so any instance can handle any request and a failed instance can be replaced without losing user context. This removes single-instance state as a failure point, directly enabling high availability.
- ✓
Design for horizontal scaling using auto-scaling groups
Why this is correct
Horizontal scaling via auto-scaling groups lets instances be added or replaced automatically when demand spikes or a node fails, so capacity is not tied to a single host. This directly satisfies the high-availability requirement by removing individual instances as single points of failure across availability zones.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
One of 834 original CV0-004 practice questions on Courseiva, each with a full explanation and wrong-answer analysis — not exam dumps or protected exam content. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
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.