PK0-005 Practice Question: Basics of IT Infrastructure and IT Project Management
A project is deploying a new virtualized server environment. The project manager receives a report that resource pooling is inefficient. Which technology can best improve resource utilization across the virtual hosts?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse load balancing (which distributes network traffic) with resource pooling optimization, failing to recognize that memory overcommitment is the specific hypervisor feature that directly improves utilization of pooled compute resources.
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
✓
Hypervisor memory overcommitment
Hypervisor memory overcommitment allows a hypervisor to allocate more virtual machine (VM) memory to VMs than the physical RAM available on the host, relying on the fact that VMs rarely use their full allocated memory simultaneously. This directly improves resource utilization by enabling higher VM density per physical host, which is the core inefficiency in resource pooling. Technologies like VMware ESXi's transparent page sharing or KSM (Kernel Same-page Merging) further optimize this by deduplicating identical memory pages.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
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VLANs
Why it's wrong here
VLANs segment network traffic at layer 2, which does nothing to redistribute compute or memory capacity between virtual hosts. It is tempting because segmentation improves network management, but its purpose is isolation; pooling inefficiency requires a distributed resource scheduler that balances workloads across hosts.
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Load balancing
Why it's wrong here
Load balancing distributes incoming network requests across servers, not CPU, memory or storage capacity between virtual hosts. It is tempting because it spreads traffic, but its purpose is connection distribution; resource pooling inefficiency needs a distributed resource scheduler (DRS) that migrates workloads.
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RAID
Why it's wrong here
RAID provides disk-level redundancy and performance within a single host, so it cannot redistribute CPU or memory workloads across virtual hosts. It is tempting because it improves storage reliability, but resource pooling inefficiency requires a distributed resource scheduler, not disk striping or mirroring.
- ✓
Hypervisor memory overcommitment
Why this is correct
Memory overcommitment lets the hypervisor assign more RAM to virtual machines than physically present, reclaiming idle pages through ballooning and swapping. This directly raises consolidation ratios and utilisation across hosts, addressing the inefficient resource pooling reported without adding hardware.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This PK0-005 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 PK0-005 exam.