KCNA Cloud Native Architecture Practice Test 9 — 15 Questions

Question 1

Which THREE of the following are benefits of using a service mesh? (Select three.)

Accepted Answer

Fine-grained traffic control (e.g., canary deployments). A service mesh, such as Istio or Linkerd, provides fine-grained traffic control through features like traffic splitting, header-based routing, and weighted load balancing. This enables canary deployments by directing a small percentage of traffic to a new version of a service, allowing safe testing in production without affecting all users.

Answer

Automatic scaling of pods

Answer

Increased application performance

Question 2

Which TWO of the following are essential components of a GitOps workflow? (Select two.)

Accepted Answer

An operator that synchronizes the cluster state with the Git repository. A GitOps workflow relies on an operator (such as Argo CD or Flux) that continuously reconciles the actual cluster state with the desired state declared in a Git repository. This operator automatically detects drift and applies changes to ensure the cluster matches the Git source, which is the core feedback loop of GitOps.

Answer

A separate database for storing desired state

Answer

A monitoring dashboard for visualizations

Answer

A CI/CD pipeline that manually applies changes

Question 3

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

Accepted Answer

To host and foster open source cloud native projects and promote cloud native technologies. The CNCF is a vendor-neutral foundation that hosts and fosters cloud native projects like Kubernetes, Prometheus, and Envoy, promoting cloud native technologies and practices.

Answer

To standardize cloud APIs across all public cloud providers

Answer

To provide certification programs and best practices for cloud native computing

Answer

To develop and maintain a single cloud native technology stack

Question 4

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

Accepted Answer

Config. Factor III of the 12-factor app methodology states that config should be stored in environment variables to keep it separate from code.

Answer

Backing services

Answer

Dependencies

Answer

Codebase

Question 5

A development team wants to deploy a serverless function that triggers when a file is uploaded to an S3 bucket. Which cloud native technology is most appropriate for this scenario?

Accepted Answer

Knative. Knative is a Kubernetes-based platform to build, deploy, and manage serverless workloads, including event-driven functions. AWS Lambda is a proprietary service, not a cloud native project.

Answer

AWS Lambda

Answer

Helm

Answer

Istio

Question 6

In a service mesh architecture, which component is responsible for intercepting and managing traffic to and from a pod?

Accepted Answer

Sidecar proxy. The sidecar proxy (e.g., Envoy) runs alongside each service instance and intercepts all network traffic, enabling features like traffic management and observability.

Answer

Ingress controller

Answer

API gateway

Answer

Control plane

Question 7

A company wants to manage its Kubernetes resources using Git as the single source of truth, with automated synchronization. Which approach should they use?

Accepted Answer

GitOps with ArgoCD or Flux. GitOps is a practice where the entire system state is described declaratively in Git, and automated tools synchronize the cluster to match. ArgoCD and Flux are popular GitOps tools.

Answer

Using Helm charts without version control

Answer

Infrastructure as Code with Terraform

Answer

Using kubectl apply -f with a CI/CD pipeline

Question 8

In the context of resiliency patterns, which pattern is designed to prevent a cascade of failures by isolating each component so that a failure in one component does not affect others?

Accepted Answer

Bulkhead. The bulkhead pattern isolates resources (e.g., thread pools, connections) so that a failure in one part of the system doesn't bring down other parts. Circuit breaker is for handling failures of external calls, not isolation.

Answer

Retry

Answer

Circuit breaker

Answer

Timeout

Question 9

Which CNCF project maturity level indicates that a project has adopted the CNCF Code of Conduct and is considered early-stage?

Accepted Answer

Sandbox. The CNCF has three maturity levels: sandbox (early-stage), incubating (growing), and graduated (mature). Sandbox projects are early-stage and have accepted the CNCF Code of Conduct.

Answer

Incubating

Answer

Graduated

Answer

Experimental

Question 10

An application requires external configuration that varies between environments (dev, staging, prod). Following the 12-factor app methodology, how should this configuration be provided?

Accepted Answer

Use environment variables. The 12-factor app methodology recommends storing configuration in environment variables to keep it separate from code and vary per deploy.

Answer

Store configuration in a config file that is version-controlled

Answer

Use a centralized database for configuration

Answer

Hard-code the configuration in the application code

Question 11

In a multi-cloud scenario, an organization wants to avoid vendor lock-in by abstracting infrastructure provisioning. Which tool is specifically designed to manage infrastructure as code across multiple cloud providers?

Accepted Answer

Terraform. Terraform is an infrastructure-as-code tool that supports multiple cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP, etc.) with a declarative configuration language. Pulumi also supports multiple clouds but is less widely adopted in the CNCF ecosystem.

Answer

Helm

Answer

Istio

Answer

ArgoCD

Question 12

Which of the following is a key difference between a service mesh and an API gateway?

Accepted Answer

Service mesh manages east-west traffic between services, while API gateway manages north-south traffic from external clients. Service mesh focuses on internal service-to-service communication within the cluster, while API gateway handles external traffic entering the cluster (north-south traffic). Both can perform traffic management, but their scopes differ.

Answer

Service mesh is only used in multi-cloud environments, while API gateway is for single-cloud

Answer

Service mesh provides authentication and authorization, while API gateway does not

Answer

Service mesh handles north-south traffic, while API gateway handles east-west traffic

Question 13

An organization wants to implement a serverless function that scales to zero when not in use. Which technology is specifically designed to achieve this on Kubernetes?

Accepted Answer

Knative. Knative Serving supports scale-to-zero, automatically scaling down pods when they are not receiving requests. This is a key feature of serverless on Kubernetes.

Answer

Prometheus

Answer

Istio

Answer

Kubernetes Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA)

Question 14

In event-driven architecture, which pattern is commonly used to decouple producers and consumers, allowing asynchronous communication?

Accepted Answer

Event broker (message queue or event bus). Event-driven architecture decouples producers and consumers via an event broker (e.g., message queue or event bus), enabling asynchronous communication. Direct synchronous calls would couple them.

Answer

Shared database

Answer

Circuit breaker pattern

Answer

Synchronous REST API calls

Question 15

Which TWO of the following are CNCF graduated projects? (Select 2)

Accepted Answer

Prometheus. Prometheus and Envoy are both CNCF graduated projects. CoreDNS is also graduated, but the question asks for two; Fluentd and Helm are both graduated as well, but the correct answers here are Prometheus and Envoy.

Answer

Kyverno

Answer

Knative

Answer

ArgoCD