SY0-701 Security Architecture Practice Question
A customer portal runs on a single application server behind a database cluster. Leadership wants the portal to keep working if that application server fails, but the budget is tight and the team wants the simplest design that can automatically fail over. What should they add?
⚠ Common exam trap
It's easy for candidates to confuse high availability with disaster recovery, assuming that a cold backup or RAID storage provides automatic failover, when in fact only a hot standby with health checks meets the automatic requirement without over-engineering the solution.
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
✓
A second application server configured as an active-passive failover pair with health checks.
An active-passive failover pair with health checks provides automatic failover at the lowest complexity and cost. The passive server remains on standby, and health checks (e.g., ICMP, TCP port checks, or HTTP GET requests) detect application server failure, triggering automatic IP or service takeover. This meets the requirement for automatic failover without the expense and complexity of active-active or multi-region designs.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
A second application server configured as an active-passive failover pair with health checks.
Why this is correct
An active-passive pair provides automatic failover for a single server failure without the cost and complexity of a larger multi-node design. Health checks let the standby take over when the primary becomes unavailable, which matches the stated availability goal and budget constraint.
- ✗
A cold backup server that is started manually after the outage is detected.
Why it's wrong here
A cold backup server is a standby system kept powered off until needed. Recovery requires human detection of the outage, then manual startup and configuration, so the portal remains offline for an extended period. Because failover is not automatic and there are no health checks to trigger it, this design fails to meet the requirement for automatic continuation after a server failure.
- ✗
A multi-region active-active deployment with global traffic steering.
Why it's wrong here
A multi-region active-active deployment would use global traffic steering to distribute requests across two production sites, but this is far more expensive and operationally complex than the scenario calls for. It requires database synchronization, cross-region failover logic, and load balancers in each region, all to solve a single-server availability problem. The budget-conscious goal is to protect against one server failure, not a regional outage, so this option is not the simplest low-cost solution.
- ✗
Additional RAID storage in the application server to prevent service interruption.
Why it's wrong here
Adding RAID storage to the application server provides redundancy for disk drives, allowing the system to continue operating after a disk failure. However, RAID does nothing to protect against a failed motherboard, power supply, operating system crash, or application fault, so the portal can still go down entirely if the server itself dies. Service availability depends on a redundant compute host, not just resilient storage.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Secure Network Design Principles
Key term
TCP
TCP is a connection-oriented transport layer protocol that ensures reliable, ordered, and error-checked delivery of data between applications over IP networks.
Key term
ICMP
ICMP is a network-layer protocol used by network devices to send error messages and operational information about network connectivity.
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Same concept, more angles
1 more way this is tested on SY0-701
These questions test the same concept from different angles. Work through them to make sure you can recognise it however the exam phrases it.
Variation 1. A customer-facing website must stay available if one of two application servers fails. Which design should the team implement?
easy- A.A single server with a larger power supply
- ✓ B.A load balancer in front of multiple application servers
- C.A daily screenshot of the website
- D.A more restrictive password policy
Why B: A load balancer distributes incoming traffic across multiple application servers, providing high availability and fault tolerance. If one server fails, the load balancer automatically redirects traffic to the remaining healthy server(s), ensuring the website remains accessible. This design directly addresses the requirement for continued availability despite a single server failure.
JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This SY0-701 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 SY0-701 exam.