CompTIA CV0-003 - CompTIA Cloud+ Certification Exam

The most secure way to store the credentials for a new application that is running in containers and requires access to a database is to use the orchestrator secret manager. The orchestrator secret manager is a feature that allows storing and managing sensitive data, such as passwords, tokens, or keys, for containers in an encrypted and centralized way. It also provides access control, auditing, and rotation features for the secrets. This method will protect the credentials from being exposed or compromised by unauthorized parties or malicious actors. Reference: [CompTIA Cloud+ Certification Exam Objectives], Domain 2.0 Security, Objective 2.5 Given a scenario, apply data security techniques in the cloud.

 The best storage technology to configure for maximum performance and redundancy is RAID 10 (Redundant Array of Independent Disks 10). RAID 10 is a combination of RAID 1 (mirroring) and RAID 0 (striping) that provides both fault tolerance and improved performance. RAID 10 divides and replicates the data across multiple disks in pairs, creating mirrored sets, and then stripes the data across those sets, creating a striped set. RAID 10 can withstand multiple disk failures as long as they are not in the same mirrored set, and can also increase the read and write speed by parallelizing the disk operations. Reference: [CompTIA Cloud+ Certification Exam Objectives], Domain 1.0 Configuration and Deployment, Objective 1.2 Given a scenario involving requirements for deploying an application in the cloud, select an appropriate solution design.

As mentioned in the question, the security appliances are using syslog to forward the logs to a central log aggregation solution. According to the web search results, syslog is a protocol that runs over UDP port 514 by default, or TCP port 6514 for secure and reliable transport1. However, some implementations of syslog can also use TCP port 514 for non-secure transport2. Therefore, to allow the web servers to connect to the central log collector using syslog over TCP, the firewall rule should allow TCP 514 outbound from the web servers to the log collector.

The best way to resolve the issue of an unusual increase in the read operations that is causing a heavy load in the system that is using a relational database and is running in a VM is to use a cache system to store reading operations. A cache system is a type of storage system that temporarily stores frequently accessed or recently used data in memory for faster retrieval. A cache system can reduce the load on the database system by serving the read requests from the cache instead of querying the database every time. Reference: [CompTIA Cloud+ Certification Exam Objectives], Domain 4.0 Troubleshooting, Objective 4.3 Given a scenario, troubleshoot capacity issues within a cloud environment.

The most likely reason why users are not experiencing any performance benefit after upgrading the memory of their on-premises VMs is that the operating system has a memory limit that prevents it from using more than 8GB of RAM. This could be due to the operating system version, edition, or configuration. The systems administrator should check the operating system settings and requirements and adjust them accordingly to allow the VMs to use the full 16GB of RAM. Reference: CompTIA Cloud+ Certification Exam Objectives, Domain 4.0 Troubleshooting, Objective 4.3 Given a scenario, troubleshoot capacity issues within a cloud environment.

The first step to identify the scope of an incident in an IaaS platform is to perform a traffic capture on the affected instances or network interfaces. This will help to determine the source, destination, and nature of the malicious or anomalous traffic, as well as the impact on the network performance and availability. A traffic capture can also provide evidence for further analysis and remediation. Reference: CompTIA Cloud+ Certification Exam Objectives, Domain 4.0 Troubleshooting, Objective 4.2 Given a scenario, troubleshoot security issues related to cloud implementations.

A network security group is a service that allows the cloud administrator to filter and control the network traffic between different resources in a cloud environment. A network security group contains security rules that specify the source, destination, protocol, port, and direction of the traffic, and whether to allow or deny it. A network security group can be associated with a subnet or a network interface in a virtual machine, and it can apply to inbound or outbound traffic. A network security group would be the best way to achieve the objective of controlling the connections between a group of web servers and database servers as part of the financial application security review, as it can provide granular and flexible control over the network access and security of the servers.

A .yaml file is a common file type for defining the configuration and deployment of application containers in a cloud environment. YAML stands for YAML Ain’t Markup Language, and it is a human-readable data serialization language that uses indentation and keywords to represent the structure and values of the data1. A .yaml file can specify the properties of the container, such as the image, ports, environment variables, volumes, resources, and scaling rules. For example, to modify the replication factor of an automated application container from 3 to 5, the systems administrator can edit the .yaml file on the master controller and change the value of the replicas field under the spec section2. For example:

apiVersion: apps/v1 kind: Deployment metadata: name: my-app spec: replicas: 5 # change this value from 3 to 5 selector: matchLabels: app: my-app template: metadata: labels: app: my-app spec: containers: - name: my-app image: my-app-image ports: - containerPort: 80

A .txt file is a plain text file that can store any kind of text data, but it is not a standard format for defining container configurations. A .conf file is a configuration file that can store settings and parameters for various applications or services, but it is not commonly used for container deployments. A .etcd file is not a valid file type, but etcd is a distributed key-value store that provides a reliable way to store data across a cluster of machines3. Etcd is often used by Kubernetes, a popular platform for managing containerized applications, to store and synchronize the cluster state. However, etcd does not store the configuration files of the containers, but rather the runtime data of the cluster. Therefore, none of these options are correct.

A CDN (content delivery network) is a system of distributed servers that deliver web content to users based on their geographic location, the origin of the web page, and the content delivery server1. A CDN can improve the user experience by reducing the latency, bandwidth, and load on the origin server. By offloading the images to an object storage, such as Google Cloud Storage or Amazon S3, the web application can save costs and improve performance by storing and serving the images from a CDN edge location that is closer to the user2. A CDN can also provide caching, compression, and security features for the web content3.

The first thing that the systems administrator must do before planning a penetration test for company resources that are hosted in a public cloud is to consult the cloud services provider’s policies and guidelines. Penetration testing is a type of security assessment that involves simulating an attack on a system or network to identify vulnerabilities and weaknesses. However, not all cloud services providers allow penetration testing on their platforms, or they may have specific rules and requirements for conducting such tests. The systems administrator should check the cloud services provider’s policies and guidelines and obtain their permission and approval before performing any penetration testing. Reference: CompTIA Cloud+ Certification Exam Objectives, Domain 2.0 Security, Objective 2.4 Given a scenario, implement security automation and orchestration in a cloud environment.