CompTIA Cloud+ Practice Test

In a cloud environment, which factor is primarily responsible for ensuring data availability?

1. Data backups

2. Redundancy

3. Encryption

4. User access controls

The correct answer is: Redundancy

In a cloud environment, redundancy is primarily responsible for ensuring data availability. Redundancy involves having duplicate components, resources, or systems that can take over in the event of failure or unavailability. By leveraging redundancy, such as multiple data copies across different geographic locations or using failover systems, organizations can ensure that their data remains accessible even if one or more components fail. For instance, cloud service providers often utilize arrangements like data replication across different servers or regions. This design ensures that if one server experiences an outage or a failure, another server can immediately handle the requests without interruption, thus maintaining data availability. In contrast, data backups, while important, serve primarily as a recovery measure rather than an availability feature. Backups restore data after loss or corruption but do not prevent unavailability when systems go down. Encryption is focused on securing data and protecting it from unauthorized access rather than keeping it accessible. User access controls manage who can access data but do not influence system reliability or availability directly.