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SY0-701 Security Architecture Practice Question

Exhibit

Order service topology:
Internet -> Load balancer -> App Server A
Internet -> Load balancer -> App Server B
Database -> Single instance in AZ1
Application servers are stateless.
Requirement: service must continue if one app server goes down, with no manual failover steps.

Based on the exhibit, which architecture best meets the goal of keeping the order service running if one application server fails?

⚠ Common exam trap

Watch out — candidates often confuse data redundancy (RAID 1) with server-level fault tolerance, or they mistake backup strategies (nightly backups) for high-availability solutions, failing to recognize that only active-active or active-passive clustering with automatic failover meets the requirement of uninterrupted service during a server failure.

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

✓

Run the application servers active-active behind the load balancer.

An active-active architecture behind a load balancer ensures that if one application server fails, the load balancer automatically redirects traffic to the remaining healthy server(s). This provides high availability and fault tolerance without manual intervention, keeping the order service running continuously.

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 one active server with a warm standby server that is started manually during outages.
Why it's wrong here
This approach requires human intervention to promote the standby server, which extends recovery time (RTO) and introduces the risk of misconfiguration or delayed detection of failure. Because failover is not automatic, there is a period of downtime while an administrator manually switches traffic, so it does not meet a high-availability goal.
✓
Run the application servers active-active behind the load balancer.
Why this is correct
This architecture keeps multiple application servers online simultaneously, with the load balancer distributing incoming requests and performing health checks. If one server fails, the load balancer stops sending traffic to it and the surviving servers continue handling the load, so service remains uninterrupted. This automatic failover and redundancy directly satisfies the goal of high availability.
✗
Store the application binaries on RAID 1 disks to prevent service interruption.
Why it's wrong here
RAID 1 mirrors data across two disks to protect against a single disk failure, but it does nothing to protect against the failure of the server itself—such as a CPU, RAM, motherboard, or power supply failure. Even if the application binaries are intact on the mirrored disk, the server cannot process requests if it is offline. Storage redundancy does not provide compute redundancy.
✗
Take nightly backups of the application servers and restore them after a failure.
Why it's wrong here
Backups protect data and configuration but are a recovery mechanism, not an availability mechanism. After a server failure, you must repair or replace hardware, restore the backup, and reconfigure the environment, which can take hours or days and lose any changes made since the last nightly backup. This manual, slow process does not provide continuous service.

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SY0-701 Security Architecture Practice Question

Exhibit

Why each option matters

Option-by-option breakdown

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