CKAD Application Observability and Maintenance Practice Question
A pod in the 'production' namespace is in a CrashLoopBackOff state. The pod has been running successfully for several days. You run 'kubectl describe pod app-pod -n production' and see the message: 'OOMKilled'. What is the MOST appropriate action to resolve this issue?
⚠ Common exam trap
Watch out — candidates often confuse 'OOMKilled' with a general crash and think restarting the pod (Option B) will fix it, but the OOM killer will immediately terminate the new container again because the memory limit remains unchanged.
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
✓
Increase the memory limit in the pod's container resource specification
The 'OOMKilled' message indicates the container was terminated because it exceeded its memory limit. The most appropriate action is to increase the memory limit in the pod's container resource specification, allowing the container more memory to operate without being killed by the Out-of-Memory (OOM) killer.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Delete the namespace and redeploy all workloads
Why it's wrong here
This is a destructive action that would affect all workloads in the namespace. It is not appropriate for resolving a single pod's memory issue.
- ✗
Delete and recreate the pod to clear the crash loop
Why it's wrong here
Deleting and recreating the pod without changing the resource limits will result in the same OOMKilled event.
- ✗
Increase the CPU request for the container
Why it's wrong here
OOMKilled is a memory issue, not a CPU issue. Increasing CPU requests will not prevent the container from being killed due to memory exhaustion.
- ✓
Increase the memory limit in the pod's container resource specification
Why this is correct
OOMKilled indicates the container exceeded its configured memory limit. Increasing the memory limit allows the container to use more memory and prevents the OOM kill.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This CKAD 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 CKAD exam.