Which cloud service model provides virtual machines and other hardware abstraction accessible via a service API?

• A. Public Cloud
• B. Private Cloud
• C. IDaaS
• D. IaaS

Answer: (D)

The concept being tested is Infrastructure as a Service. This model provides the core computing resources you need to run systems—virtual machines, storage, and networking—delivered as services that you can provision, configure, and manage through an API. The emphasis is on abstracting the physical hardware while giving you control over the software stack and infrastructure, all via programmatic interfaces.

Public cloud and private cloud describe where the resources reside and how they’re managed, not the type of service you access. Public cloud means the provider’s infrastructure is shared among many tenants, while private cloud is dedicated to a single organization. IDaaS, Identity as a Service, focuses on identity management and access control, not on provisioning virtual machines or hardware resources. So the option that best matches “virtual machines and other hardware abstraction accessible via a service API” is Infrastructure as a Service.