KCNA Cloud Native Architecture Practice Test 5 — 15 Questions

Question 1

Drag and drop the steps to configure a Kubernetes Service of type LoadBalancer in a cloud environment into the correct order.

Accepted Answer

Step 1: Deploy the application. Step 2: Define and create the LoadBalancer service. Step 3: Retrieve the external IP. Step 4: Access the application using the IP.. First deploy the app, then define and create the LoadBalancer service, retrieve the IP, and access it.

Answer

Step 1: Define and create the LoadBalancer service. Step 2: Deploy the application. Step 3: Retrieve the external IP. Step 4: Access the application.

Answer

Step 1: Retrieve the external IP. Step 2: Deploy the application. Step 3: Define and create the LoadBalancer service. Step 4: Access the application.

Answer

Step 1: Deploy the application. Step 2: Retrieve the external IP. Step 3: Define and create the LoadBalancer service. Step 4: Access the application.

Question 2

Match each Kubernetes object to its typical use case.

Accepted Answer

Deployment: Manage stateless applications with rolling updates and rollbacks. Correct matches: Deployment manages stateless apps with rolling updates; StatefulSet handles stateful apps with stable identities; DaemonSet runs a pod on every node. Common confusions: mixing Deployment with DaemonSet (one per node vs. stateless management) and StatefulSet with Jobs (stateful vs. batch).

Answer

Deployment: Ensure one pod per node in the cluster

Answer

StatefulSet: Run a batch job to completion

Question 3

Which of the following best describes the purpose of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF)?

Accepted Answer

To promote cloud native technologies and host open source projects. The CNCF's primary purpose is to foster the adoption of cloud native technologies by hosting and governing open source projects like Kubernetes, Prometheus, and Envoy. It provides a neutral home for these projects, ensuring they are developed collaboratively under a vendor-neutral governance model. This aligns directly with option A, which captures both the promotional and hosting roles of the foundation.

Answer

To define the 12-factor app methodology

Answer

To provide cloud infrastructure services for enterprises

Answer

To develop and maintain the Kubernetes project exclusively

Question 4

Which of the following is a core principle of cloud native architecture as defined by the CNCF?

Accepted Answer

Microservices packaged in containers. The CNCF defines cloud native as an approach that uses containers, service meshes, microservices, immutable infrastructure, and declarative APIs to build loosely coupled systems that are resilient, manageable, and observable. Microservices packaged in containers is the foundational pattern: each service is independently deployable, scalable, and isolated, which enables the automation and orchestration (e.g., Kubernetes) that cloud native relies on.

Answer

Monolithic application design

Answer

Manual scaling of applications

Answer

Static infrastructure provisioning

Question 5

In the 12-factor app methodology, which factor describes the practice of storing configuration in environment variables?

Accepted Answer

Config. The Config factor (Factor III) of the 12-factor app methodology mandates that configuration—such as database URLs, credentials, or feature flags—be stored in environment variables. This decouples configuration from code, allowing the same build to be deployed across different environments without code changes, and prevents accidental commits of secrets to version control.

Answer

Backing services

Answer

Processes

Answer

Build, release, run

Question 6

A team wants to deploy a serverless function that scales to zero when not in use. Which CNCF project is specifically designed for this purpose?

Accepted Answer

Knative. Knative is the correct answer because it is a CNCF project built on Kubernetes that provides a serverless platform specifically designed to scale workloads to zero when not in use. It achieves this through its Serving component, which automatically scales pods down to zero replicas based on traffic, and scales up from zero on the first request, enabling true serverless behavior.

Answer

Helm

Answer

Prometheus

Answer

Envoy

Question 7

Which component in a service mesh is responsible for handling traffic management, security, and observability as a sidecar proxy?

Accepted Answer

Envoy. Envoy is the sidecar proxy used in service meshes like Istio, where it handles all data plane traffic. It intercepts inbound and outbound traffic for each service instance, enforcing traffic routing, mutual TLS, and telemetry collection. Unlike control plane components, Envoy runs as a sidecar container alongside the application, making it directly responsible for the actual traffic management, security, and observability functions at runtime.

Answer

Pilot

Answer

Mixer

Answer

Citadel

Question 8

Which of the following best describes the GitOps pattern?

Accepted Answer

Declarative configuration stored in Git, with automated deployment via a controller. GitOps is a pattern where the entire system's desired state is declared in a Git repository, and an automated controller (such as Argo CD or Flux) continuously reconciles the live cluster state with that declarative configuration. This ensures that Git is the single source of truth, and any drift from the declared state is automatically corrected without manual intervention.

Answer

Imperative commands applied to the cluster and tracked in Git

Answer

Using Git as a backup for Kubernetes manifests

Answer

Using Git hooks to trigger CI/CD pipelines

Question 9

In a multi-cloud architecture, what is a common use case for a service mesh?

Accepted Answer

To enable secure service-to-service communication across clusters. A service mesh, such as Istio or Linkerd, provides a dedicated infrastructure layer for handling service-to-service communication. In a multi-cloud architecture, its common use case is to enable secure, observable, and resilient communication between services running in different Kubernetes clusters across clouds, using mutual TLS (mTLS) for encryption and traffic policies for routing.

Answer

To synchronize Kubernetes resources across clouds

Answer

To provide cloud-agnostic block storage

Answer

To provide a single ingress gateway for all clouds

Question 10

Which of the following is a benefit of using an API gateway pattern?

Accepted Answer

It provides a single entry point for clients and handles cross-cutting concerns. An API gateway sits in front of microservices and provides a single, unified entry point for all external clients, while centralizing cross-cutting concerns such as authentication, rate limiting, TLS termination, request routing, and logging. This decouples clients from the internal service topology, so services can be refactored or scaled without changing client code. It is a traffic-management and policy-enforcement layer, not a compute or storage layer.

Answer

It reduces the number of microservices needed

Answer

It replaces the need for a service mesh

Answer

It stores application state

Question 11

What is the primary purpose of the sidecar container in a service mesh?

Accepted Answer

To intercept and manage network traffic for the main container. In a service mesh, the sidecar container (typically an Envoy or Linkerd proxy) is injected alongside the main application container to intercept and manage all inbound and outbound network traffic. This allows the service mesh to enforce traffic policies, handle service discovery, implement retries and circuit breaking, and collect telemetry without modifying the application code. The sidecar operates at the network layer (L4/L7), decoupling communication concerns from business logic.

Answer

To run application business logic

Answer

To handle logging and monitoring of the main container

Answer

To provide persistent storage for the main container

Question 12

Which TWO of the following are principles of the 12-factor app? (Choose two.)

Accepted Answer

Config. Config is a core principle of the 12-factor app methodology, which mandates strict separation of configuration from code. Configuration (such as database URLs, credentials, or hostnames) must be stored in environment variables, not hardcoded in the application source. This allows the same codebase to be deployed across different environments (development, staging, production) without modification, adhering to the principle of config-driven behavior.

Answer

Monolithic deployment

Answer

Stateful sessions

Answer

Manual provisioning

Question 13

Which THREE of the following are benefits of using an event-driven architecture? (Choose three.)

Accepted Answer

Better resilience through decoupled components. Option B is correct because event-driven architecture decouples producers from consumers, so if one component fails or is slow, others can continue operating and events can be buffered or retried, improving overall resilience. Option C is correct because asynchronous processing lets events be queued and consumed independently, allowing components to scale out horizontally based on event volume rather than being blocked by synchronous calls. Option E is correct because services communicate through events via a broker or event bus rather than direct point-to-point calls, which reduces dependencies and enforces loose coupling between services. Option A is not correct because event-driven systems typically make debugging and tracing harder, since flows span multiple asynchronous hops and require correlation IDs and distributed tracing. Option D is not correct because event-driven architectures still require robust monitoring, observability, and alerting to track event flows, broker health, and consumer lag.

Answer

Simpler debugging and tracing

Answer

Reduced need for monitoring

Question 14

Which CNCF project maturity level indicates that a project has successfully adopted the CNCF governance and is considered stable for production use?

Accepted Answer

Graduated. The Graduated maturity level is the highest in the CNCF project lifecycle, indicating that a project has both successfully adopted CNCF governance and is considered stable for production use. To achieve Graduated, a project must meet rigorous criteria including adoption by multiple end users, a defined governance structure, and completion of a security audit. This distinguishes it from lower maturity levels such as Sandbox (early-stage) and Incubating (growing but not yet stable).

Answer

Incubating

Answer

Experimental

Answer

Sandbox

Question 15

A development team wants to adopt a cloud-native architecture for a new application. Which set of principles BEST describes the cloud-native approach?

Accepted Answer

Microservices, containers, dynamic orchestration, and DevOps. Cloud-native is defined by the CNCF as combining containers, microservices, service meshes, immutable infrastructure, and declarative APIs — with dynamic orchestration (Kubernetes) and DevOps culture as the operational backbone. Option A bundles all four pillars correctly: microservices for decomposition, containers for packaging, dynamic orchestration for scheduling/scaling, and DevOps for the cultural/process model. These four elements reinforce each other: containers enable microservices, orchestration makes containers manageable at scale, and DevOps provides the feedback loops.

Answer

Service-oriented architecture, bare-metal servers, static scaling, and Agile

Answer

Monolithic applications, virtual machines, manual scaling, and waterfall development

Answer

Serverless functions, virtual machines, manual provisioning, and ITIL