CKAD Application Design and Build Practice Question
A Pod has two containers: one with a liveness probe that fails after 30 seconds. The restartPolicy is 'Never'. What state will the Pod be in after the liveness probe fails?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates confuse the restartPolicy 'Never' with 'OnFailure' and assume the Pod will enter CrashLoopBackOff, but CrashLoopBackOff only applies when the restartPolicy allows restarts; with 'Never', the Pod fails permanently.
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
✓
Failed
When a liveness probe fails, Kubernetes terminates the container and, because the restartPolicy is 'Never', does not restart it. The Pod transitions to the 'Failed' phase, as the container has exited with a non-zero exit code and will not be recreated. This is the expected behavior for a Pod with a single container that fails its health check under a 'Never' restart policy.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Running
Why it's wrong here
The Running phase indicates the Pod is bound to a node with all containers created and at least one still running. Once the failing liveness probe causes kubelet to terminate the main container, that condition is no longer true. Because restartPolicy is Never, the Pod does not get a replacement container and moves to a terminal phase, so Running cannot persist.
- ✓
Failed
Why this is correct
A liveness probe failure makes the kubelet kill the container; with restartPolicy: Never the kubelet will not restart it. The container's exit is processed as a terminal status, and the Pod is marked Failed (the phase is exactly Failed when all containers in a Pod have terminated and at least one has exited non-zero or was killed). This is the expected result in this scenario rather than a crash loop.
- ✗
Unknown
Why it's wrong here
Unknown is a transient Pod phase used when the kubelet cannot obtain the Pod's status, typically because the node has lost heartbeats. A liveness probe is executed by a working kubelet and produces an application-level failure, not a node-level communication failure. The Pod remains in Running until the container is terminated; afterwards the known terminal state is Failed, not Unknown.
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CrashLoopBackOff
Why it's wrong here
CrashLoopBackOff is not a Pod phase but a state describing repeated rapid restarts, and it can only occur when restartPolicy is Always or OnFailure. With restartPolicy: Never, the kubelet exits after the first termination and makes no restart attempt, so the backoff mechanism never engages. The immediate terminal result of the probe failure is therefore Failed, not CrashLoopBackOff.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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