Nutanix Certified Associate Practice Exam

Which two locations can be used for availability zones?

1. AWS

2. Any public cloud

3. Physical Datacenter

4. Xi Cloud Services

The correct answer is: Physical Datacenter

Availability zones are distinct locations within a region that provide redundancy and fault tolerance for cloud applications. They are designed to mitigate the impact of outages and to enhance the availability of applications. The concept of availability zones is often associated with cloud service providers that offer physically separated datacenters within a region. Using a physical datacenter as an availability zone is appropriate because it can be set up to operate independently from other datacenters, ensuring that if one fails due to power issues, natural disasters, or other problems, the others can continue to function. In scenarios where businesses require high availability, having multiple physical datacenters (each acting as its own availability zone) can be critical for maintaining operations and ensuring service uptime. The other choices, while they may provide cloud services or infrastructure, do not specifically refer to the concept of availability zones in the way that a physical datacenter can. Public clouds and services like AWS and Xi Cloud Services offer infrastructure and design capabilities that support scalability and availability, but the term "availability zone" typically applies to the physical separation of datacenters to guarantee that their operations can independently sustain outages. Thus, a physical datacenter is a clear and valid choice for establishing availability zones.