CCSP Cloud Concepts, Architecture, and Design Practice Question
An organization is evaluating cloud service providers and notices that one provider's SLA offers 99.99% availability for a specific service, while another offers 99.9%. If the service costs $100,000 per month, what is the maximum allowable downtime per month for the 99.99% SLA?
⚠ Common exam trap
CCSP often tests the ability to convert availability percentages into actual downtime, and candidates frequently misplace a decimal point or confuse 99.9% with 99.99%, leading to errors like choosing 43.2 minutes instead of 4.32 minutes.
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
✓
4.32 minutes
The 99.99% SLA allows for a maximum of 0.01% downtime per month. Assuming a 30-day month (43,200 minutes), 0.01% of 43,200 minutes is 4.32 minutes. Therefore, the correct answer is 4.32 minutes.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
8.64 minutes
Why it's wrong here
99.99% availability permits roughly 4.32 minutes of downtime monthly, not 8.64 minutes; that figure corresponds to 99.98%. It is tempting because halving the 99.9% allowance of 43.2 minutes seems intuitive, but the calculation is 0.0001 times 43,200 minutes, giving 4.32 minutes.
- ✗
43.2 minutes
Why it's wrong here
43.2 minutes is the monthly downtime allowance for 99.9% availability, not 99.99%. It is tempting because 99.9% is the other SLA quoted in the stem, so the figure is present in the scenario, but the question asks specifically about the 99.99% commitment, which permits 4.32 minutes.
- ✗
2.16 minutes
Why it's wrong here
99.99% monthly availability permits roughly 4.32 minutes of downtime, not 2.16; that figure corresponds to 99.998% or a fortnightly window. It is tempting because halving the 99.9% allowance (43.2 minutes) looks like a tidy way to reflect one extra nine, but each additional nine cuts permitted downtime by a factor of ten.
- ✓
4.32 minutes
Why this is correct
99.99% availability permits 0.01% downtime. In a 30-day month of 43,200 minutes, that equals 4.32 minutes of maximum allowable downtime, matching the stem's monthly cost basis. The 99.9% figure would instead allow roughly 43.2 minutes.
About these practice questions
This CCSP question is part of Courseiva's 934-question bank — original exam-style content with full explanations and wrong-answer analysis, never real exam questions or exam dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official ISC2 exam blueprint
This CCSP practice question is part of Courseiva's free ISC2 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 CCSP exam.