M0.3 module quiz
Ten questions. 80% to pass (8 of 10). Open book, unlimited retakes.
Answers are collapsed under each question. Answer first, then check.
Q1
A workload runs 168 hours a week. Stopping it on Saturday and Sunday saves:
A. 28.6%
B. 14.3%
C. 33.3%
D. 50.0%
Show answer
Correct: A. A weekend skip removes 48 of 168 hours, leaving 120. The 14% figure is what a single-day skip produces, leaving 144 hours, and confusing the two is the most common arithmetic slip in scheduling business cases.
Q2
A 1-year Reserved Instance at 40% discount loses money against on-demand below what utilization?
A. 40%
B. 60%
C. 71.4%
D. 76.9%
Show answer
Correct: B. Break-even utilization = 1 − discount. Below 60% use of the committed hours, the unused commitment costs more than the discount earns.
Q3
Break-even for a commitment is a threshold on:
A. Coverage
B. Both equally
C. Effective discount
D. Utilization
Show answer
Correct: D. Under-coverage never loses money: eligible hours the commitment does not cover simply run on-demand at rack rate. Under-utilization is what loses money, because you paid for committed hours you did not use.
Q4
The non-prod fallacy is:
A. Believing non-prod can be scheduled
B. Buying reservations for non-prod
C. Believing non-prod spend is negligible
D. Tagging non-prod inconsistently
Show answer
Correct: B. Non-prod is the workload most amenable to scheduling and therefore the one whose utilization a commitment can least rely on. Committing to it is the textbook over-commitment mistake.
Q5
Commitments are bought on:
A. The post-schedule floor, the always-on overlap that survives your schedules
B. The monthly average taken across the whole of the estate right now
C. The current peak hour of the week
D. The forecast for the coming quarter
Show answer
Correct: A. Buy for the peak and utilization drops below break-even the moment the peak subsides. The floor is the only quantity a commitment can safely assume will still be running.
Q6
Scheduling is NOT a good fit for:
A. Development environments used in office hours
B. Analyst sandboxes that idle overnight
C. A workload that must serve traffic continuously
D. CI runners between pipeline runs
Show answer
Correct: C. Scheduling removes hours. A workload with no removable hours has nothing for the lever to act on, and that is the case where commitments become the right instrument instead.
Q7
Coverage and utilization are, respectively:
A. Covered hours over eligible hours; used hours over purchased hours
B. Both measures of discount depth
C. Used hours over purchased hours; covered hours over eligible hours
D. Both measures of commitment length
Show answer
Correct: A. Swapping the two is a recurring error. Coverage tells you the share of eligible spend the commitment touches; utilization tells you whether the commitment itself earns out.
Q8
Scheduling and commitments compose by:
A. Being mutually exclusive levers
B. Applying both to the same hours
C. Scheduling first to establish the floor, then committing on that floor
D. Committing first to lock in the rate, and only then scheduling
Show answer
Correct: C. They are complementary levers on different quantities: scheduling removes hours, commitments reduce the rate on the hours that remain. The order matters because the second depends on the outcome of the first.
Q9
A workload runs 24/7 with steady demand and cannot be stopped. The right lever is:
A. Scheduling
B. Neither
C. Both, applied together
D. Commitments
Show answer
Correct: D. No removable hours means scheduling has nothing to act on, and steady always-on demand is exactly the profile a commitment is designed for. This is the case where commitments genuinely win.
Q10
The 60-day baselining rule exists to:
A. Satisfy the provider’s own requirements for reservations
B. Allow the org’s tag coverage to improve first
C. Establish the real post-schedule floor before committing to it
D. Let anomaly detection accumulate data points
Show answer
Correct: C. Committing on a floor you have not yet observed for long enough is committing on a guess. The waiting period is the proof step in “schedule first, then commit”.