Question 18 of 144
SK0-005 server-administration Practice Question
You are the lead server administrator for a mid-sized e-commerce company. The web application is hosted on a farm of four Linux servers running Apache, fronted by a hardware load balancer. The load balancer currently uses a round-robin algorithm. Recently, the customer support team has received numerous complaints about slow page load times and occasional timeouts during checkout. You log into the server monitoring console and observe that one of the web servers, web03, has a CPU utilization consistently above 95%, while the other three servers are at around 30-40%. You connect via SSH to web03 and run the 'top' command, identifying a process named 'imagick' consuming 99% CPU. Further investigation reveals that this process is related to image resizing for product thumbnails, and it appears to have entered an infinite loop due to a malformed image file. Meanwhile, the load balancer continues to send requests to all servers equally, including the overloaded web03, causing some requests to time out. You need to restore performance immediately and prevent recurrence. Which of the following actions should you take?
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
✓
Kill the 'imagick' process on web03, change the load balancer algorithm to least connections, and clear the malformed image.
Option B is correct because it directly addresses both issues: the runaway process (killing it stops the CPU drain) and the load balancer algorithm (switching to least connections prevents sending traffic to an already overloaded server). Additionally, clearing the malformed image addresses the root cause of the loop. Option A (adding servers) may temporarily hide the problem but does not fix the load distribution or the looping process; the overloaded server would still exist. Option C (rebooting all servers) is unnecessarily disruptive and does not address the root cause; the malformed image could trigger the loop again after reboot. Option D (increasing RAM) misidentifies the issue as memory-related when it is clearly CPU-bound; more RAM would not stop the infinite loop.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Kill the 'imagick' process on web03, change the load balancer algorithm to least connections, and clear the malformed image.
Why this is correct
This comprehensive approach resolves the immediate CPU issue, prevents future misdirection of traffic, and removes the root cause.
- ✗
Reboot all four web servers to clear any stuck processes.
Why it's wrong here
A mass reboot is extreme and temporary; the malformed image could re-trigger the problem, and it does not address the load balancing flaw.
- ✗
Increase RAM on web03 to handle the high CPU process better.
Why it's wrong here
The issue is an infinite CPU loop, not a memory shortage. Adding RAM would not resolve the CPU spike or the underlying image processing bug.
- ✗
Add two more servers to the farm and keep the round-robin algorithm.
Why it's wrong here
Adding servers may reduce the likelihood of overloading, but it does not resolve the runaway process or the distribution issue; the faulty node still exists.
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Last reviewed: Jul 26, 2026
This SK0-005 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 SK0-005 exam.
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