AWS (Amazon Web Services) Certification Practice Exam

Scaling up/down in cloud computing typically involves:

1. Altering the physical components of servers

2. Changing performance specifications of virtual machines

3. Increasing the number of physical servers

4. Minimizing overall resource consumption

The correct answer is: Changing performance specifications of virtual machines

Scaling up or down in cloud computing, also known as vertical scaling, primarily involves changing the performance specifications of virtual machines. This means that you can adjust the compute resources (such as CPU, memory, and storage) allocated to a virtual instance without needing to change the underlying hardware. In cloud environments, services allow for seamless adjustments to resource allocations based on current demand. For example, if an application is experiencing higher load, additional CPU or memory can be provisioned dynamically to handle the increased traffic. Conversely, if load decreases, resources can be scaled back down to optimize costs and resource use. This flexibility is one of the fundamental advantages of cloud computing. Other options, while related to infrastructure management, do not accurately represent the common practices of scaling in cloud environments. Altering physical components of servers, for instance, isn't practical in a cloud setting, where users typically do not have direct control over physical hardware. Increasing the number of physical servers relates more to horizontal scaling, which involves adding more instances rather than adjusting individual instance specifications. Minimizing overall resource consumption is an outcome one might hope for through efficient scaling practices but does not define the act of scaling in itself.