CompTIA Cloud+ Practice Test

Which feature should a cloud administrator use when provisioning VMs with a total RAM requirement greater than available RAM?

1. Memory overcommitment

2. Thin-provisioned model

3. Process scheduling

4. Hyperthreading

The correct answer is: Process scheduling

The appropriate feature for a cloud administrator to use when provisioning virtual machines (VMs) with a total RAM requirement that exceeds the available physical RAM is memory overcommitment. This technique allows the allocation of more virtual memory to VMs than the total physical memory available on the host. Memory overcommitment is effective in many virtualized environments because it takes advantage of the fact that not all VMs will use their allocated memory capacity simultaneously. By leveraging this feature, a cloud administrator can ensure that even if the total requested memory for all VMs exceeds what is physically present, the VMs can still be provisioned. This can significantly improve resource utilization and cost efficiency in a cloud environment. While the thin-provisioned model refers to a method of allocating storage where the physical disk space is only consumed as data is written, and process scheduling and hyperthreading pertain more to CPU management, they do not specifically address the challenge of RAM overcommitment in the way that memory overcommitment does.