IBM Cloud Advocate v1 Advanced Practice Exam: Hard Questions 2025

A financial services company is migrating a mission-critical application to IBM Cloud that requires strict data residency in Frankfurt, Germany. The application uses IBM Cloud Object Storage, IBM Db2 on Cloud, and IBM Cloud Functions. During a compliance audit, concerns are raised about data sovereignty when Cloud Functions processes data. What architectural approach ensures complete data residency compliance while maintaining optimal performance?

An enterprise has deployed a microservices architecture on IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service with 50+ services. They experience intermittent timeouts and cascading failures during peak load. Application logs show that Service A calls Service B, which calls Service C, and timeouts occur when Service C is under heavy load. What combination of patterns should be implemented to improve resilience?

A data analytics platform on IBM Cloud processes sensitive healthcare data using IBM Watson Studio and stores results in IBM Cloud Object Storage. The security team identifies that a compromised service ID with Writer access could potentially exfiltrate data. The solution must prevent data exfiltration while maintaining necessary write operations for analytics jobs. What is the most effective security architecture?

An organization runs a globally distributed application with users in North America, Europe, and Asia. They use IBM Cloud Internet Services (CIS) for global load balancing across three regions. During a recent incident, the Dallas region became unhealthy but CIS continued routing 30% of traffic there for 8 minutes, causing user impact. Investigation shows health checks were passing intermittently. What configuration changes would prevent this scenario?

A SaaS company on IBM Cloud needs to implement tenant isolation for their multi-tenant application serving 500+ enterprise customers with strict security requirements. Each tenant's data must be cryptographically isolated, and key compromises must not affect other tenants. The solution must be operationally manageable and cost-effective. What architecture best achieves these requirements?

A development team is advocating for cloud-native practices in an organization with legacy mainframe applications. The CTO is concerned about the cost and risk of re-platforming 20-year-old COBOL applications that process critical financial transactions. As a Cloud Advocate, what migration strategy and rationale would you recommend to balance innovation with risk management?

An IBM Cloud environment uses a hub-and-spoke VPC architecture with Transit Gateway connecting 15 spoke VPCs. Applications in spoke VPCs need to access IBM Cloud Object Storage and IBM Db2 SaaS services without traversing the public internet, while maintaining centralized security controls and minimizing costs. Network latency must be minimized. What is the optimal architecture?

A company deployed IBM Cloud Kubernetes Service clusters across multiple zones in the Tokyo region. During a zone failure simulation, they discovered that while pods were rescheduled to healthy zones, persistent volumes became unavailable causing application failures. The applications use PostgreSQL with local persistent volumes. What architectural changes ensure high availability during zone failures?

An organization wants to implement FinOps practices for their IBM Cloud environment spanning 25 accounts under an Enterprise. They need granular cost allocation, showback/chargeback capabilities, and proactive cost optimization. Teams frequently spin up expensive resources that run indefinitely. What comprehensive approach implements effective FinOps?

A highly regulated healthcare organization needs to deploy AI/ML workloads processing patient data on IBM Cloud while meeting HIPAA compliance requirements. The data science team wants to use IBM Watson Studio and IBM Watson Machine Learning. The compliance team requires cryptographic attestation that code hasn't been tampered with and that data is processed in a secure enclave. What architecture satisfies these requirements?