The correct design is a load balancer in front of multiple application servers. This configuration achieves high availability by distributing incoming traffic across the server pool; if one server fails, the load balancer automatically redirects requests to the remaining healthy servers, ensuring the website remains accessible without interruption. On the Security+ SY0-701 exam, this scenario tests your understanding of fault tolerance and redundancy as core availability principles—a common trap is assuming a single server with failover clustering is sufficient, but load balancers provide active-active distribution rather than passive standby. Remember the mnemonic “LAMP” for high availability: Load balancer, Application servers, Multiple nodes, Persistent uptime.
SY0-701 Security Architecture Practice Question
This SY0-701 practice question tests your understanding of security architecture. The scenario asks you to isolate a root cause — eliminate options that address a different problem before choosing. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
A customer-facing website must stay available if one of two application servers fails. Which design should the team implement?
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
A load balancer in front of multiple application servers
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.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
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 single server with a larger power supply
Why it's wrong here
A bigger power supply does not provide another server to take over if the system fails.
✓
A load balancer in front of multiple application servers
Why this is correct
A load balancer can send traffic to a healthy server if one instance becomes unavailable.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
A daily screenshot of the website
Why it's wrong here
Screenshots are not a resilience control and cannot keep the service online during failure.
✗
A more restrictive password policy
Why it's wrong here
Password rules help access security, but they do not add availability or failover capability.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates may confuse high availability with other security or operational measures, such as backups or password policies, failing to recognize that only redundant infrastructure with automatic failover can maintain uptime during a server failure.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Load balancers operate at Layer 4 (TCP/UDP) or Layer 7 (HTTP/HTTPS) and use health checks (e.g., periodic HTTP GET requests to a /health endpoint) to monitor server status. If a server fails to respond within a defined timeout or returns a non-2xx status code, the load balancer removes it from the pool and stops sending traffic to it, often within seconds. In real-world deployments, session persistence (sticky sessions) must be carefully configured or avoided to prevent user disruption during failover.
KKey Concepts to Remember
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Find the constraint that changes the correct option.
Eliminate answers that are true in general but not in this case.
TExam Day Tips
→Watch for words such as best, first, most likely and least administrative effort.
→Review why wrong options are wrong, not only why the correct option is correct.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
How this comes up in practice
A security analyst at a medium-sized enterprise encounters this scenario during an investigation or architecture review. The correct answer reflects best practice for the specific threat or control described. Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option. Security exam questions test whether you can match controls to threats in context — not just recall definitions.
Related glossary terms
Concepts from this question explained
These glossary pages explain the core terms tested in this SY0-701 question in full detail.
Security Architecture — This question tests Security Architecture — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: A load balancer in front of multiple application servers — 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.
What should I do if I get this SY0-701 question wrong?
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
What is the key concept behind this question?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
About these practice questions
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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 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?
medium
✓ A.A second application server configured as an active-passive failover pair with health checks.
B.A cold backup server that is started manually after the outage is detected.
C.A multi-region active-active deployment with global traffic steering.
D.Additional RAID storage in the application server to prevent service interruption.
Why A: Option A is correct because 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.
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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.
Question Discussion
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