CKA Workloads and Scheduling Practice Question
A Job named 'pi' runs a container that computes pi to 2000 digits. The Job's spec has completions=3 and parallelism=2. After some time, you observe that two pods completed successfully, and the third pod is still running. What is the expected behavior when the third pod completes?
⚠ Common exam trap
A common mix-up: candidates confuse `parallelism` with a requirement for all parallel pods to finish, or think that a Job must have all pods running concurrently to succeed, leading them to incorrectly select Option D.
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 Job will be marked as Complete
A Job with `completions=3` and `parallelism=2` is considered complete when the required number of successful pod completions (3) is reached. Since two pods have already completed and the third is still running, once it finishes successfully, the total successful completions will equal the `completions` value, and the Job controller will mark the Job as Complete. The Job does not require all pods to run concurrently or finish simultaneously.
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 Job will be marked as Complete
Why this is correct
In Kubernetes, a Job tracks successful pod executions to determine its overall status. Once the number of successfully terminated pods reaches the configured completions value, the Job controller updates the Job's status to Complete. No further pods are scheduled, and the Job transitions to a terminal successful state.
- ✗
The Job will restart the completed pods
Why it's wrong here
Pods that exit successfully with a zero status code are transitioned to the Succeeded phase and are never restarted by the Job controller. The Job's restart policy, which must be set to either OnFailure or Never, only applies to failed containers or pods. Completed pods remain intact in the cluster to allow administrators to inspect their logs.
- ✗
The Job will continue to run new pods indefinitely
Why it's wrong here
The Job controller regulates pod creation based on the completions parameter in the Job specification. Because this parameter defines a strict, finite target of successful pod completions, the controller will stop spawning new pods as soon as that target is met. It does not behave like a Deployment or ReplicaSet, which maintain a continuous running state indefinitely.
- ✗
The Job will be marked as Failed because parallelism is not fully utilized
Why it's wrong here
The parallelism field defines the maximum number of pods that can run concurrently, acting as a ceiling rather than a strict requirement. If the actual number of active pods falls below this limit—due to scheduling constraints or because the completion target is nearly reached—the Job is not considered failed. It will successfully complete as long as the target completions are met.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This CKA practice question is part of Courseiva's free CNCF 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 CKA exam.