easyMultiple ChoiceObjective-mapped
FC0-U71 Practice Question: A small e-commerce company uses a monolithic web…
A small e-commerce company uses a monolithic web application hosted on a single server. During peak shopping hours, the server becomes overloaded, causing slow page loads and occasional timeouts. The development team wants to improve scalability and maintainability. They are considering breaking the application into smaller, independent services that can be developed, deployed, and scaled separately. Which approach should the team adopt?
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
✓
Migrate to a microservices architecture.
Microservices architecture involves decomposing an application into small, independent services. Option A is correct. Option B is incorrect because serverless computing is a cloud execution model, not an architecture specific to breaking up a monolith; it still requires code to be structured. Option C is incorrect because service-oriented architecture (SOA) is similar but typically relies on an enterprise service bus (ESB) for communication, which can create a single point of failure and is less granular than microservices. Option D is incorrect because containerization packages the application into containers but does not inherently split the monolith; the app remains monolithic unless the code is refactored.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Migrate to a microservices architecture.
Why this is correct
Microservices break the app into small, independent services for better scalability and maintainability.
- ✗
Move the application to a serverless computing platform.
Why it's wrong here
Serverless is a deployment model, not a solution for breaking a monolith into services.
- ✗
Implement a service-oriented architecture (SOA) with an enterprise service bus.
Why it's wrong here
While an enterprise service bus (ESB) in a service-oriented architecture (SOA) could orchestrate communication between services, it introduces a centralised integration layer that becomes a single point of failure and a performance bottleneck, directly contradicting the need to eliminate the overload on the single server. This option is tempting because SOA is often associated with decomposing monolithic applications, and an ESB provides robust message routing and protocol translation for heterogeneous systems; it would be the correct choice if the company needed to integrate diverse legacy systems across multiple platforms rather than simply scaling a web application.
- ✗
Containerize the existing monolithic application.
Why it's wrong here
Containerization alone does not break the monolith into independent services.
Quick reference
Cloud Service Model Comparison
| Model | You Manage | Provider Manages | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| IaaS | OS, runtime, apps, data | Hardware, hypervisor, networking | EC2, Azure VMs, GCP Compute Engine |
| PaaS | Apps and data | OS, runtime, middleware, hardware | Elastic Beanstalk, Azure App Service |
| SaaS | Data and settings only | Everything else | Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Workday |
| FaaS / Serverless | Function code only | Infra, scaling, runtime | Lambda, Azure Functions, Cloud Run |
| CaaS | Containers and apps | Kubernetes, OS, hardware | EKS, AKS, GKE |
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This FC0-U71 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 FC0-U71 exam.