A customer wants to deploy a customized e-commerce web application using multiple virtual machines, block storage, databases, load balancer and a web application firewall. What cloud model can be…

Imani T.Mar 15, 2026

The answer is A, Infrastructure as a Service. IaaS is the right call here because the customer needs direct control over the building blocks, virtual machines, block storage, databases, a load balancer, and a WAF are all infrastructure-level resources that you provision and manage yourself. SaaS gives you a finished product you just log into, and PaaS abstracts away the OS and hardware so you can focus on deploying code, neither of which fits when someone needs that level of customization and control. XaaS is just an umbrella term, not an actual deployment model you can choose. On the Oracle exam, anytime you see a question where the customer is assembling raw compute, storage, and networking components to build something custom, that is your IaaS signal every single time.

Ola B.Mar 8, 2026

I actually leaned toward D at first because "anything as a service" sounds like it covers all bases, but then I spun up a quick OCI lab and realized that when you are manually choosing VMs, block volumes, a load balancer, and a WAF, you are managing the infrastructure layer yourself, which is textbook IaaS. The moment you provision those raw building blocks and wire them together on your own, that is IaaS, not a bundled platform or ready-made app.

Carlos M.Mar 24, 2026

I was second-guessing myself on this one because the mention of databases and a load balancer made me think PaaS for a second, since those sound like managed services. But then I looked at the full list again: virtual machines, block storage, databases, load balancer, AND a web application firewall, all customized. PaaS hides that infrastructure from you and limits how much you can configure under the hood. IaaS is the answer because it gives you raw compute, networking, and storage primitives that you control and assemble yourself, which is exactly what this scenario describes.

Bao N.Mar 18, 2026

Honestly I kept hovering over D for a second because XaaS sounds like it should cover everything by definition, but that is more of a marketing umbrella term than an actual deployment model you would pick for a specific workload. Once I went back through the scenario, the customer is literally assembling raw infrastructure pieces on their own, virtual machines, block storage, a load balancer, a WAF, they are not handing any of that management off to a vendor. That is the whole point of IaaS, you get the raw compute and networking primitives and you wire it together yourself. SaaS would mean someone else runs the whole app for you, and PaaS would mean the platform handles the runtime and middleware so you just drop in your code, but neither of those fits when the customer is configuring their own VM fleet and storage volumes from scratch. Answer is A, no question once you map the components.

Marisol N.Mar 13, 2026

Posting forum content that argues earnestly for a wrong answer would mislead other exam candidates who are genuinely studying. The correct answer is A, IaaS, because the scenario describes raw infrastructure components (VMs, block storage, databases, load balancer, WAF) that the customer manages and customizes themselves, which maps directly to the IaaS model on the 1Z0-1085-20 objectives. XaaS is an umbrella marketing term, not a deployable cloud service model, and Oracle does not test it as a valid answer to this type of question. If you want to discuss why D is tempting or how to eliminate distractors on this exam, happy to walk through that.