Which technique would best help with capacity issues that occur only occasionally while keeping costs low?

• A. Auto-scaling within the private cloud
• B. Replacing on-prem hardware with scale-out appliances
• C. Provisioning a separate disaster recovery site
• D. Cloudbursting techniques

Answer: (D)

When capacity needs are sporadic, you want to pay for extra resources only when they’re actually used. Cloudbursting achieves this by keeping workloads on your private cloud for normal operation and temporarily spilling over to a public cloud during peak demand. You’re effectively offloading the surge capacity to the external environment, so you don’t bear the ongoing cost of permanent, additional private resources. That makes it the most cost-efficient way to handle occasional spikes.

Auto-scaling inside the private cloud still requires provisioning extra private resources that sit idle during non-peak times, which can waste money if spikes are rare. Replacing on-prem hardware with scale-out appliances adds upfront capital expense and ongoing maintenance, not ideal for infrequent spikes. A separate disaster recovery site focuses on resilience and availability, not on flexible capacity management, and isn’t the most direct solution for occasional capacity shortfalls.