220-1101 Question 370
Single answerPublic cloudA small business with 25 employees wants to stop maintaining its own file server because hardware failures and backups are consuming too much time. The owner asks for a solution that employees can access over the internet from the office, home, or while traveling, without the company buying new server hardware. Which of the following BEST describes the type of solution the business should adopt?
- A
A public cloud file storage service hosted by a third-party provider
- B
A private cloud environment built on new servers in the company's office
- C
A local NAS appliance with RAID configured in the network closet
- D
A peer-to-peer file sharing setup using employee workstations
Show answer and explanation
Correct answer: A
Explanation
The best answer is a public cloud file storage service hosted by a third-party provider. In A+ Core 1, public cloud refers to resources such as storage or applications delivered over the internet by an external provider and shared across customers, typically on a subscription or usage basis. This model is well suited for small businesses that want to reduce on-premises hardware, improve accessibility, and shift maintenance responsibilities to the provider. Industry best practices from major vendors such as Microsoft, Google, and Amazon emphasize public cloud benefits including scalability, remote accessibility, and reduced local infrastructure management. In this scenario, those benefits directly solve the business problem better than private cloud, NAS, or peer-to-peer sharing.
- A. Correct.
Correct. A public cloud file storage service is hosted by a third-party provider and accessed over the internet. This fits the scenario because the company wants to avoid purchasing new server hardware while allowing remote access from multiple locations. Public cloud solutions commonly provide scalability, provider-managed infrastructure, and reduced on-premises maintenance, which directly addresses the owner's concerns about hardware failures and backup management.
- B. Incorrect.
Incorrect. A private cloud can provide cloud-like access and control, but in this option it is built on new servers in the company's office. That does not meet the business requirement to avoid buying and maintaining hardware. A candidate might choose this option because it includes the word 'cloud,' but the key distinction is that private cloud infrastructure is typically dedicated to one organization and often requires significant in-house resources.
- C. Incorrect.
Incorrect. A local NAS appliance can centralize file storage and may improve reliability, but it is still on-premises hardware that the company must purchase, maintain, protect, and back up. It also does not inherently provide the same level of internet-based access and provider-managed infrastructure as a public cloud service. This is a plausible distractor because NAS devices are common small-business file solutions, but they do not satisfy the no-new-hardware requirement as well as public cloud does.
- D. Incorrect.
Incorrect. Peer-to-peer file sharing uses employee computers to share files directly, which is not appropriate for a business needing consistent availability, centralized management, and secure remote access. Workstation-based sharing is harder to manage, less reliable, and depends on individual systems being powered on and correctly configured. Someone might choose this if thinking only about avoiding server purchases, but it creates major operational and security drawbacks.