CKAD Practice Test 48 — 15 Questions

Question 1

A team is deploying a microservice that must be reachable within the cluster via a stable DNS name. They also need to distribute traffic among pods. Which Kubernetes resource provides both service discovery and load balancing?

Accepted Answer

Service. A Service in Kubernetes provides a stable DNS name (via cluster DNS, e.g., CoreDNS) that resolves to the Service's ClusterIP, and it load-balances traffic across the pods selected by its label selector using iptables or IPVS rules. This directly fulfills the requirement for both service discovery and load balancing within the cluster.

Answer

ConfigMap

Answer

Secret

Answer

Ingress

Question 2

A developer wants to deploy a stateless application as a set of identical pods. They need the pods to be distributed across nodes and have stable network identities. Which resource should they use?

Accepted Answer

Deployment. A Deployment is the correct choice for a stateless application that needs identical pods distributed across nodes. It manages a ReplicaSet to ensure the desired number of replicas, supports rolling updates, and provides stable network identities via a headless Service or a regular Service, but the pods themselves do not require stable identities—only the Service provides a stable endpoint. For stateless workloads, Deployments are the standard resource.

Answer

Job

Answer

DaemonSet

Answer

StatefulSet

Question 3

A developer wants to ensure that a critical application always runs on every node in the cluster. Which resource should they use?

Accepted Answer

DaemonSet. A DaemonSet ensures that a pod runs on every node in the cluster, or on a subset of nodes based on a node selector. This is the correct resource for deploying a critical application that must be present on all nodes, such as a logging agent or a monitoring daemon.

Answer

StatefulSet

Answer

ReplicaSet

Answer

Deployment

Question 4

During a deployment update, the rollout is stuck and new pods are not becoming ready. The developer checks the events and sees 'Back-off restarting failed container'. What is the most likely cause?

Accepted Answer

The container's entrypoint command fails immediately after start. The 'Back-off restarting failed container' event indicates that the container process exits immediately after starting, causing Kubernetes to repeatedly restart it with increasing back-off delays. This is most commonly caused by a container entrypoint or command that fails at runtime, such as a misconfigured binary, missing dependency, or incorrect startup script. Unlike probe failures, which cause restarts after the container is already running, this error occurs before the container can even become ready.

Answer

The liveness probe is failing

Answer

The image pull secret is missing

Answer

The pod exceeds its memory limit and is OOMKilled

Question 5

A pod is running but not responding to requests. The developer suspects the liveness probe is misconfigured. Which command can they use to check the probe configuration of a running pod?

Accepted Answer

kubectl describe pod . Option B is correct because `kubectl describe pod ` displays the full pod specification, including the liveness probe configuration (e.g., `Liveness: http-get /healthz delay=0s timeout=1s period=10s #success=1 #failure=3`). This allows the developer to verify the probe type, endpoint, initial delay, timeout, and failure threshold directly from the running pod's definition.

Answer

kubectl logs <pod-name>

Answer

kubectl exec <pod-name> -- env

Answer

kubectl get pod <pod-name>

Question 6

Which THREE of the following are valid ways to expose a set of pods as a network service?

Accepted Answer

LoadBalancer Service. A LoadBalancer Service is a valid way to expose a set of pods as a network service because it provisions an external load balancer (e.g., from a cloud provider) that distributes traffic to the pods via a NodePort and ClusterIP underneath. This allows external clients to access the service using a single IP address or hostname, making it suitable for production-grade external exposure.

Answer

Ingress

Answer

ExternalName Service

Question 7

Which TWO of the following conditions must be met for a RollingUpdate to proceed?

Accepted Answer

The new pod must pass its readiness probe. A is correct because during a RollingUpdate, the new pod must pass its readiness probe before the old pod is terminated. This ensures the new pod is capable of serving traffic, preventing service disruption. The readiness probe is checked by the kubelet, and only when it succeeds does the ReplicaSet controller proceed with the update.

Answer

The new ReplicaSet must have the desired number of pods

Answer

The old ReplicaSet must be scaled to zero

Answer

The old ReplicaSet must be deleted

Question 8

Match each kubectl command to its function.

Question 9

A Deployment has replicas: 3 and uses a ConfigMap. The ConfigMap is updated. The developer wants to update the pods to use the new ConfigMap without recreating the Deployment. What is the correct approach?

Accepted Answer

kubectl rollout restart deployment/. A `kubectl rollout restart deployment/` triggers a rolling restart of the Pods managed by the Deployment. Since ConfigMaps are mounted as volumes or injected as environment variables at Pod creation time, the only way to pick up updated ConfigMap data without recreating the Deployment object itself is to force the existing Pods to be terminated and recreated. The Deployment controller handles this gracefully, ensuring zero downtime by following the configured rolling update strategy.

Answer

kubectl set image deployment/ =

Answer

The pods automatically mount the new ConfigMap within seconds

Answer

Delete and recreate each pod manually

Question 10

A company wants to ensure zero-downtime deployments for a stateless web application running in Kubernetes. They have a single Deployment with 3 replicas and a Service of type LoadBalancer. Which strategy should they use to achieve this?

Accepted Answer

Use RollingUpdate with maxSurge=25% and maxUnavailable=0. Option C is correct because a RollingUpdate strategy with maxSurge=25% and maxUnavailable=0 ensures that during a deployment, the desired number of replicas is always available (no downtime). maxUnavailable=0 means no old Pods are terminated until new ones are ready, and maxSurge=25% allows one extra Pod (25% of 3 replicas = 0.75, rounded up to 1) to be created before terminating old ones, maintaining capacity for zero-downtime updates.

Answer

Use Recreate strategy

Answer

Use RollingUpdate with maxSurge=100% and maxUnavailable=100%

Answer

Use RollingUpdate with maxSurge=0 and maxUnavailable=25%

Question 11

A company wants to deploy a stateful database on Kubernetes. The database requires stable network identities and persistent storage per pod. Which resource should be used?

Accepted Answer

StatefulSet. StatefulSet is the correct resource because it provides stable, unique network identities (via headless Services and ordinal pod names like `db-0`, `db-1`) and persistent storage per pod (via PersistentVolumeClaims that are retained across rescheduling). This matches the requirement for a stateful database where each pod must maintain its identity and data independently.

Answer

Job

Answer

Deployment

Answer

DaemonSet

Question 12

A team is deploying a microservice that requires a ConfigMap mounted as a volume. The ConfigMap is expected to be updated frequently, and the application should read the latest values without restarting. Which volume type should be used?

Accepted Answer

Projected volume. A Projected volume allows you to mount multiple existing volume sources, including ConfigMaps, Secrets, and others, into the same directory. When the ConfigMap is updated, the contents of the Projected volume are automatically updated via the kubelet's periodic sync (default every 60 seconds), enabling the application to read the latest values without restarting the pod.

Answer

hostPath

Answer

persistentVolumeClaim

Answer

emptyDir

Question 13

A company wants to deploy a stateless web application on Kubernetes. The application needs to be accessible externally via a stable IP address and should support SSL termination at the ingress level. Which resource should be used to route external traffic to the application?

Accepted Answer

Ingress. Ingress is the correct resource because it provides external HTTP/HTTPS access to services within a cluster, supports SSL/TLS termination at the ingress controller level, and can expose multiple services under a single stable IP address or hostname. Unlike other service types, Ingress is specifically designed for layer 7 routing and SSL termination, making it ideal for stateless web applications that require a stable external endpoint.

Answer

ClusterIP

Answer

NodePort

Answer

LoadBalancer

Question 14

A developer is deploying a web application that requires 2 GiB of memory and 0.5 CPU cores. The cluster nodes have 4 GiB of memory and 2 CPU cores each. The developer wants to ensure the pod gets guaranteed QoS class. Which resource specification should be used?

Accepted Answer

requests: memory: 2Gi, cpu: 500m; limits: memory: 2Gi, cpu: 500m. Option B is correct because for a pod to receive the Guaranteed QoS class, every container in the pod must have both resource requests and limits set, and the requests must equal the limits for each resource (memory and CPU). This configuration ensures the pod is not overcommitted and gets the highest priority under resource pressure.

Answer

requests: memory: 2Gi, cpu: 500m; no limits

Answer

requests: memory: 2Gi, cpu: 500m; limits: memory: 4Gi, cpu: 1

Answer

requests: memory: 1Gi, cpu: 250m; limits: memory: 2Gi, cpu: 500m

Question 15

A developer needs to deploy a container that runs a batch job to process data once and then exit. The job should be restarted only if it fails. Which Kubernetes resource should be used?

Accepted Answer

Job. A Kubernetes Job is the correct resource for a batch workload that runs to completion and exits. It ensures the pod is restarted only on failure (via the `RestartPolicy: OnFailure` or `Never`), which matches the requirement of restarting only if the job fails. Deployments and DaemonSets are designed for long-running processes, not termination.

Answer

DaemonSet

Answer

Deployment

Answer

StatefulSet