MS-900 Describe cloud concepts Practice Question
A financial services company uses a public cloud provider for its development and testing environments, but keeps its production data and applications on-premises due to strict regulatory requirements. Which cloud deployment model is the company using?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates confuse 'hybrid cloud' with 'public cloud' because the company uses a public provider, but the key distinction is the combination of on-premises and public resources, not exclusive use of one.
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
✓
Hybrid cloud
The company uses a hybrid cloud model because it combines on-premises infrastructure (private cloud) for production workloads with a public cloud provider for development and testing. This allows the organization to meet strict regulatory requirements for data residency and security while leveraging the scalability and cost benefits of the public cloud for non-sensitive workloads.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Hybrid cloud
Why this is correct
Hybrid cloud describes an environment that integrates a public cloud provider with on-premises infrastructure, and here the company uses public cloud for dev/test while keeping production on-premises for regulatory data residency. This mixed deployment lets the organization balance scalability and cost efficiency with strict compliance requirements, which is the defining characteristic of hybrid cloud. It is not purely public or private because both resource locations are actively used.
- ✗
Public cloud
Why it's wrong here
A public cloud deployment would place all workloads, including production, on the vendor's shared infrastructure, which is not the case since production remains on-premises. The company's own physical data center is an essential part of the architecture, so labeling the entire solution as public cloud ignores that critical component and the regulatory constraints driving that design. While the public provider is used, the overall model is not exclusively public.
- ✗
Private cloud
Why it's wrong here
Private cloud is dedicated infrastructure for a single organization, typically on-premises or hosted by a third party, but in this scenario the company also consumes public cloud resources for dev/test. That active use of a public provider means the environment cannot be called a private cloud, even if production resides in a private datacenter. The mix of dedicated and shared infrastructure points to hybrid cloud instead.
- ✗
Community cloud
Why it's wrong here
Community cloud is a shared environment designed for organizations with common compliance or operational concerns, such as agencies in the same industry, and it does not inherently involve an on-premises component. Here the architecture is a single company combining its own physical infrastructure with a general public cloud provider, which does not match the multi-organizational sharing model of community cloud. The regulatory driver is specific to the company, not a shared community requirement.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every MS-900 question from scratch — 794 in total, each with an explanation and a wrong-answer breakdown. None are copied from real exams or dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This MS-900 practice question is part of Courseiva's free Microsoft 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 MS-900 exam.