PCA Observability Concepts Practice Question
You are deploying Prometheus in a cluster with highly dynamic ephemeral pods. Which concern is the most significant regarding cardinality?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
The memory overhead of storing time series with unique label sets.
High cardinality arises from labels with high-variance values, which can lead to memory exhaustion in the Prometheus TSDB.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
The network bandwidth used by the pushgateway.
Why it's wrong here
The pushgateway is not involved in pod discovery cardinality.
- ✗
The disk space used by WAL logs.
Why it's wrong here
WAL logs are for recovery, not the primary bottleneck for cardinality.
- ✗
The number of targets being scraped.
Why it's wrong here
While important, it is not as critical as metric cardinality.
- ✓
The memory overhead of storing time series with unique label sets.
Why this is correct
Unique label combinations create new time series, consuming RAM.
About these practice questions
This PCA question is part of Courseiva's 304-question bank — original exam-style content with full explanations and wrong-answer analysis, never real exam questions or exam dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed August 2026 · checked against the official CNCF / Linux Foundation exam blueprint
This PCA practice question is part of Courseiva's free CNCF / Linux Foundation certification practice question bank. Courseiva provides original exam-style practice questions with explanations, topic-based practice, mock exams, readiness tracking, and study analytics to help learners prepare for the PCA exam.