Which statement describes a non-typical characteristic of a cloud-native architecture?

• A. Relying on monolithic, stateful applications
• B. Built as microservices and stateless
• C. Deployed via Infrastructure as Code
• D. Uses managed cloud services

Answer: (A)

Cloud-native architecture relies on small, independent services that are stateless and easily scalable, with deployment and management automated through code and managed services. The non-typical characteristic described here is relying on monolithic, stateful applications. Monoliths bundle all components into a single unit, making it hard to scale parts of the system independently and to recover from failures. They also tend to keep state inside the application, which complicates horizontal scaling and fault tolerance.

In contrast, cloud-native practice favors breaking applications into microservices that are stateless, so any instance can handle requests, and state is kept outside in databases or other persistent stores. Infrastructure as Code and managed cloud services are also common in cloud-native ecosystems because they enable repeatable provisioning, faster delivery, and reduced operational overhead.