PCA Practice Exam 2 — 20 Questions

Question 1

You want to ensure that if the Alertmanager cluster loses communication, alerts are still sent. Which configuration helps achieve this?

Accepted Answer

Use the --cluster.peer flag. High Availability (HA) for Alertmanager is achieved by running multiple instances and using the '--cluster.peer' flag to link them.

Answer

Disable grouping

Answer

Set repeat_interval to 0

Answer

Use a load balancer only

Question 2

Which TWO of these are potential side effects of high-cardinality metrics?

Accepted Answer

High memory consumption on the Prometheus server.. Memory exhaustion (OOM) and slow query performance are the direct results of high cardinality.

Answer

Reduced CPU usage on target.

Answer

Faster alert evaluation.

Answer

Decreased network bandwidth.

Question 3

Which file format does Prometheus use for its main configuration?

Accepted Answer

YAML. Prometheus configuration is strictly defined in YAML format.

Answer

XML

Answer

JSON

Answer

TOML

Question 4

Which of the following is a correct unit suffix for Prometheus metrics?

Accepted Answer

_seconds. Prometheus recommends using base units (e.g., seconds for duration, bytes for memory) and appending the unit to the name.

Answer

_total

Answer

_sum

Answer

_count

Question 5

Why are metric names required to follow a specific character set (e.g., alphanumeric and colons)?

Accepted Answer

For compatibility with PromQL. Prometheus metric names must match a regex to ensure they are compatible with the query language and internal storage format.

Answer

For faster scraping

Answer

To save disk space

Answer

To prevent duplicate metrics

Question 6

Which THREE of the following are true about the Prometheus Text Exposition Format?

Accepted Answer

It is line-oriented. It is line-oriented, supports comments starting with #, and each metric line contains the name, optional labels, and value.

Answer

It is a binary protocol

Answer

It requires an XML schema

Question 7

Which Grafana feature allows you to see data from multiple Prometheus servers on a single panel?

Accepted Answer

Data source variables. Grafana allows you to define multiple data sources and even mix them within a dashboard, or use a data source proxy.

Answer

Panel injection

Answer

Metric merging

Answer

Prometheus federation

Question 8

What is the effect of using a 'Summary' metric with client-side quantiles?

Accepted Answer

It prevents cross-instance aggregation. Client-side quantiles are calculated per instance, making it impossible to aggregate them across multiple instances of an application.

Answer

It improves performance

Answer

It allows cross-instance aggregation

Answer

It doubles the scrape time

Question 9

Which THREE of the following are standard ways to send notifications from Alertmanager?

Accepted Answer

Webhook. Webhook, Email, and PagerDuty are built-in, widely used receiver types.

Answer

FTP

Answer

SSH

Question 10

What is the default port that Prometheus listens on?

Accepted Answer

9090. 9090 is the well-known default port for the Prometheus server web interface.

Answer

9100

Answer

9093

Answer

8080

Question 11

What is the purpose of the 'rule_files' configuration?

Accepted Answer

To define alerting and recording rules. rule_files point to recording and alerting rules that Prometheus evaluates.

Answer

To manage user authentication

Answer

To define static targets

Answer

To configure global retention

Question 12

What happens if a label set for a metric changes during its lifetime?

Accepted Answer

A new time series is created. Changing a label set creates a brand new time series in Prometheus.

Answer

An error is logged

Answer

The series is updated in-place

Answer

The metric is deleted

Question 13

When writing a custom exporter in Python, what is the most common way to expose the metrics?

Accepted Answer

Using start_http_server(). The prometheus_client library provides a start_http_server() method to expose metrics on a specified port.

Answer

Writing to a file

Answer

Using a message queue

Answer

Using a database connection

Question 14

What does the `_count` suffix denote in a summary or histogram?

Accepted Answer

The total number of samples. The _count suffix represents the total number of observations made for that specific metric.

Answer

The maximum value

Answer

The sum of values

Answer

The current bucket value

Question 15

You are implementing a custom exporter for a legacy database. The database provides a single value representing the number of active connections. Which metric type should you use to best represent this data?

Accepted Answer

Gauge. Because active connections fluctuate up and down as users connect and disconnect, a Gauge is the appropriate metric type for representing a snapshot of the current state.

Answer

Summary

Answer

Histogram

Answer

Counter

Question 16

Which of the following describes the 'pull' model's benefit regarding service discovery?

Accepted Answer

Targets don't need to know where Prometheus is.. Prometheus can dynamically discover targets (via Kubernetes API, Consul, etc.) and automatically start scraping, removing the need to register every new pod.

Answer

Prometheus is always the first to start.

Answer

Targets push data when they are ready.

Answer

It reduces network traffic.

Question 17

Which of these is NOT a Golden Signal?

Accepted Answer

Storage. The Four Golden Signals are Latency, Traffic, Errors, and Saturation. 'Storage' is not one of them.

Answer

Latency

Answer

Saturation

Answer

Errors

Question 18

You need to prevent an alert from firing if a maintenance window is active. How should you approach this in Alertmanager?

Accepted Answer

Use a Silence. Silences are the standard way to prevent specific alerts from firing during a known maintenance period.

Answer

Delete the alerting rule

Answer

Modify the routing tree

Answer

Add a 'skip' label to the rule

Question 19

Which annotation is commonly used to provide a human-readable description in an alert?

Accepted Answer

description. The 'summary' or 'description' annotations are standard practices for providing context in alert notifications.

Answer

severity

Answer

instance

Answer

job

Question 20

Which THREE of the following are valid Alertmanager routing tree parameters?

Accepted Answer

receiver. Routes can filter by 'match', 'match_re', and define a 'receiver'.

Answer

server

Answer

auth_token