Cloud Digital Leader Why cloud technology is transforming business Practice Question
A retail company is experiencing unpredictable traffic spikes. Which cloud characteristic allows them to automatically add resources during peak demand and remove them when demand drops?
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
✓
Elasticity
Elasticity (option B) is correct because it is the cloud characteristic that automatically scales resources out during peak demand and scales them back in when demand drops, matching the retail company's unpredictable traffic spikes. Global reach (option A) refers to deploying resources across multiple geographic regions to serve users closer, not to automatic scaling. High availability (option C) focuses on keeping services continuously accessible and resilient, typically through redundancy, not on adding or removing capacity with demand. Pay-as-you-go (option D) is a billing model where you pay only for consumed resources, but it does not itself perform the automatic scaling.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Global reach
Why it's wrong here
Global reach concerns the geographic distribution of regions and points of presence, not the automatic scaling of compute capacity with demand. It is the correct characteristic when an application must serve users from multiple continents with low latency.
- ✓
Elasticity
Why this is correct
Elasticity automatically scales resource capacity out during peak demand and back in when traffic drops, matching provisioned infrastructure to real-time load. This directly satisfies the stem's requirement to add resources during unpredictable spikes and remove them afterwards, unlike vertical scaling, which resizes a single instance rather than dynamically adjusting capacity.
- ✗
High availability
Why it's wrong here
High availability addresses redundancy and failover so a service keeps running when a component fails; it does not add or remove capacity in response to load. It is the right characteristic when uptime guarantees and resilience to zone failures are the requirement.
- ✗
Pay-as-you-go
Why it's wrong here
Pay-as-you-go defines a billing model based on consumption, not an operational mechanism for automatic scaling. The scenario requires a system that can detect load changes and provision or decommission resources without manual intervention—this is the function of autoscaling, which pay-as-you-go does not provide. It is tempting because pay-as-you-go reduces cost during low usage, and it would be the correct choice if the question asked about financial flexibility rather than automated resource adjustment.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
High Availability: 99.9% vs 99.99% vs 99.999%
Key term
Redundancy
Redundancy is the practice of adding extra components or systems so that if one fails, another can take over without interruption.
Key term
Elasticity
Elasticity is the ability of a cloud system to automatically add or remove computing resources (like servers, storage, or bandwidth) in response to real-time changes in demand.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This GCDL practice question is part of Courseiva's free Google Cloud 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 GCDL exam.