A healthcare startup wants to avoid large upfront server purchases and instead rent infrastructure that can scale as patient demand grows. Which cloud benefit best fits this need?

The correct answer is Pay-as-you-go. This cloud benefit allows the startup to pay only for the computing resources they consume, avoiding large upfront hardware investments (capital expenditures) and enabling them to scale resources up or down based on demand. This aligns perfectly with their need to rent infrastructure and scale with patient growth. Geographic redundancy is a cloud benefit that involves distributing resources across different physical locations to protect against regional outages, which is not the primary concern here. Capital expenditure refers to upfront investments in physical assets, which the startup wants to avoid, making it an incorrect choice. High availability ensures that services remain operational even if components fail, but it doesn't directly address the cost model or scalability for growth in the way pay-as-you-go does.