CKAD Application Observability and Maintenance Practice Question
A pod is running but not receiving traffic from a Service. The readiness probe is failing. What is the likely effect on the pod?
⚠ Common exam trap
The CKAD exam often tests the distinction between readiness and liveness probes, and the trap here is that candidates confuse a failing readiness probe with a failing liveness probe, assuming the pod will be killed or restarted when it will not.
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 pod will remain running but will not be included in the Service's endpoints
When a readiness probe fails, Kubernetes marks the pod as not ready. The pod continues running, but the associated Service removes the pod's IP from its Endpoints (or EndpointSlice) list. This ensures the Service does not route traffic to a pod that is not prepared to handle requests, while allowing the pod to remain alive for debugging or other internal operations.
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 pod will be marked as CrashLoopBackOff
Why it's wrong here
CrashLoopBackOff is a Kubernetes state that occurs when a container repeatedly crashes during startup or after the start command, triggering a restart policy that backs off with exponential delays. A failing readiness probe does not alter the container's process state or trigger restarts; it only changes the pod's readiness gate. Therefore, this option misidentifies the failure mode: readiness failures simply halt traffic routing while the pod continues to run normally.
- ✓
The pod will remain running but will not be included in the Service's endpoints
Why this is correct
This is the correct behavior. The kubelet continuously executes the readiness probe, and when it fails, the pod is marked as NotReady. As a result, the endpoints controller removes the pod's IP address from the Service's Endpoints object, preventing the Service from forwarding new requests to it — but the pod itself is not stopped, restarted, or evicted, and it can still receive direct traffic from other clients if they target its IP explicitly.
- ✗
The pod will be terminated and restarted
Why it's wrong here
A pod is terminated and restarted only when the kubelet detects a liveness probe failure, which signals that the container is stuck or deadlocked and needs a restart to remain functional. Readiness probes are explicitly designed not to affect the pod's lifecycle; they only gate whether the pod is eligible to receive Service traffic. Thus, offering this as a consequence of a readiness failure confuses the distinct roles of the two probe types.
- ✗
The pod will be evicted from the node
Why it's wrong here
Pod eviction is an action taken by the kubelet or the control plane to reclaim node resources under conditions like memory pressure, disk pressure, or when a node is being drained for maintenance. A failing readiness probe does not consume extra node resources or degrade node health; it merely marks the pod as unready. Consequently, eviction never occurs solely due to readiness failure, and the pod will remain scheduled on its node until some other event (such as node pressure or manual deletion) intervenes.
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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.