PK0-005 Practice Question: Basics of IT Infrastructure and IT Project Management
A project manager is selecting a data center for a new application that requires high availability and disaster recovery. Which type of data center arrangement is most appropriate?
⚠ Common exam trap
The PK0-005 exam often tests the misconception that active-passive is sufficient for high availability, but candidates overlook that active-passive introduces failover latency and potential data loss, whereas active-active provides continuous service with no manual intervention.
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
✓
Active-active
An active-active data center arrangement is most appropriate for high availability and disaster recovery because it distributes application traffic across multiple geographically dispersed data centers, all of which are actively serving requests. If one site fails, traffic is seamlessly redirected to the remaining active sites, ensuring near-zero downtime and no data loss. This configuration supports automatic failover and load balancing, which are critical for meeting stringent recovery time objectives (RTO) and recovery point objectives (RPO).
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Active-active
Why this is correct
Active-active runs workloads simultaneously across multiple sites, so if one data centre fails, traffic continues at the other with minimal disruption. This satisfies the stem's high availability and disaster recovery constraints, unlike active-passive arrangements that require failover downtime.
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Single site
Why it's wrong here
A single site concentrates all infrastructure in one location, so any outage removes both availability and disaster recovery capability simultaneously. It is tempting because a single site is the cheapest arrangement and is adequate when the workload tolerates downtime and no recovery objective exists.
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Active-passive
Why it's wrong here
Active-passive keeps the standby site idle until failover, so recovery involves detection and switchover time, and the standby capacity is not serving traffic. It is tempting because active-passive is the classic, cost-effective disaster recovery pattern when some downtime is acceptable.
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Colocation
Why it's wrong here
Colocation rents space, power and cooling in a shared facility, but a single colocation site still provides no geographic redundancy for disaster recovery. It is tempting because colocation suits organisations wanting physical control of their own hardware without building a dedicated data centre.
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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.