MS-900 Describe cloud concepts Practice Question
Which THREE are benefits of using cloud services compared to on-premises infrastructure?
⚠ Common exam trap
The trap is selecting 'Capital expenditure (CapEx) is eliminated' as a benefit; while cloud reduces CapEx, it does not eliminate it entirely, and the exam expects you to recognize that the three correct benefits are elasticity, high availability, and disaster recovery.
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 to scale resources up or down automatically
Option B is correct because cloud providers offer elasticity, allowing resources to automatically scale up or down based on demand, which is difficult to achieve with fixed on-premises hardware. Option C is correct because cloud services are built on redundant, geographically distributed infrastructure that provides high availability and fault tolerance beyond what most on-premises environments can afford. Option D is correct because cloud providers offer built-in disaster recovery capabilities, such as cross-region replication and backup services, without requiring organizations to build and maintain a secondary site. Option A is incorrect because limited scalability due to resource constraints describes an on-premises limitation, not a cloud benefit. Option E is incorrect because cloud services shift spending to operational expenditure (OpEx), but they do not eliminate capital expenditure entirely, as organizations may still incur upfront costs for devices, migration, or reserved capacity.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Limited scalability due to resource constraints
Why it's wrong here
Limited scalability contradicts the elasticity that cloud services provide: on-premises hardware caps capacity at what you have purchased, whereas cloud platforms add or remove compute on demand. It is tempting because fixed resource ceilings genuinely describe on-premises datacentres, making this a true statement about the wrong environment rather than a cloud benefit.
- ✓
Elasticity to scale resources up or down automatically
Why this is correct
Elasticity lets cloud services automatically scale resources up or down to match demand, so organisations pay only for what they consume. This satisfies the stem's benefit requirement, contrasting with on-premises infrastructure, which needs pre-provisioned capacity sized for peak load.
- ✓
High availability through redundant infrastructure
Why this is correct
Cloud providers deliver high availability through redundant infrastructure, replicating workloads across multiple servers, zones and regions so failures do not cause outages. This satisfies the stem's benefit requirement, contrasting with on-premises infrastructure, where achieving comparable redundancy demands significant capital investment.
- ✓
Built-in disaster recovery capabilities
Why this is correct
Cloud providers replicate data and offer geo-redundant storage and failover across regions by default, so recovery from outages requires no dedicated secondary site. This satisfies the stem's benefit criterion by removing the cost and complexity of building on-premises disaster recovery infrastructure.
- ✗
Capital expenditure (CapEx) is eliminated
Why it's wrong here
Cloud services shift spend to operational expenditure, but CapEx is not eliminated — upfront costs such as reserved instances, migration and training remain. It is tempting because pay-as-you-go billing genuinely removes large hardware purchases, making this the right answer when a question asks how cloud changes cost *structure* rather than whether capital spending disappears entirely.
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Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official Microsoft exam blueprint
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