CKAD · domain
Application Observability and Maintenance
Practise Certified Kubernetes Application Developer CKAD Application Observability and Maintenance practice questions — original exam-style scenarios with answer choices, explanations, and analysis of common mistakes.
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What to know about Application Observability and Maintenance
Application Observability and Maintenance questions test whether you can apply the concept in context, not just recognise a definition.
How the topic appears in realistic exam-style scenarios.
Which detail in the question changes the correct answer.
How to eliminate plausible but wrong options.
How to connect the question back to the wider exam objective.
Watch out for
Common Application Observability and Maintenance exam traps
- ▸Answering from memory before reading the full scenario.
- ▸Missing a constraint such as cost, availability, security, scope or command context.
- ▸Choosing a broad answer when the question asks for the most specific fix.
- ▸Ignoring why the wrong options are tempting.
Question index
All Application Observability and Maintenance questions (34)
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A pod is running but not responding to traffic. You suspect the application inside the container is unhealthy but the pod is still marked as 'Running'. Which probe should be configured to remove the pod from the service's endpoints automatically?
Easy2Match each Kubernetes object field to its description.
Medium3Match each Kubernetes resource to its API group.
Medium4You want to debug a pod that is failing to start. The pod does not have a shell installed. Which command can you use to attach an ephemeral debug container to the running (or failed) pod?
Hard5A 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?
Medium6A 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?
Medium7You are debugging a pod that is crashing immediately on startup. You want to run an ephemeral container for debugging while the pod is running. Which command should you use?
Medium8You need to collect metrics from an application running in a pod. The application exposes metrics on port 8080 at /metrics in Prometheus format. Which resource should you configure to allow Prometheus to scrape these metrics?
Medium9A 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?
Medium10You have a Deployment running a web server that takes 30 seconds to initialize. You want to ensure that the load balancer does not send traffic to the pod until it is ready. Which probe should you configure?
Easy11You want to view the logs of a pod named 'web-pod' that has two containers: 'nginx' and 'sidecar'. Which command correctly retrieves the logs from the 'nginx' container?
Easy12You need to debug a pod that has no running containers because it is in a CrashLoopBackOff state. You want to start an ephemeral container with debugging tools in the same namespace. Which command accomplishes this?
Hard13A pod has a startup probe with failureThreshold: 30 and periodSeconds: 10. The application takes up to 5 minutes to start. What should be changed to ensure the startup probe does not kill the container prematurely?
Hard14A pod is running but not receiving traffic from a Service. The readiness probe is failing. What is the likely effect on the pod?
Medium15You have a Deployment that uses a ConfigMap. You update the ConfigMap, but the pods are not picking up the changes. What is the MOST efficient way to force the pods to use the new ConfigMap values without downtime?
Hard16What is the purpose of a readiness probe in Kubernetes?
Easy17You need to configure a liveness probe for a container that starts a web server on port 8080. The probe should check the '/healthz' endpoint. Which YAML snippet correctly defines this probe?
Medium18You are debugging a pod that is running but not responding to network requests on port 8080. You suspect the application inside the container is faulty. You need to run an interactive shell inside the container to inspect the process. Which command should you use?
Medium19You want to ensure your application shuts down gracefully when a pod is terminated. The application needs 30 seconds to clean up. Which field should you set in the pod spec?
Medium20You are debugging a network issue: a pod 'frontend' cannot reach a service 'backend' in the same namespace. The service endpoints are empty. What is the most likely cause?
Hard21You are designing a health check strategy for a web application. Which TWO probe types should you configure to ensure that traffic is only sent to pods that are ready to serve?
Medium22A 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?
Medium23A Pod is stuck in CrashLoopBackOff. You run 'kubectl logs mypod' and get no output. What is the most likely cause?
Medium24You have a Deployment that must run a legacy application that takes up to 5 minutes to start. You need to ensure the liveness probe does not kill the container prematurely. Which probe configuration should you use?
Hard25A developer configures a liveness probe for a container that takes a long time to start (about 120 seconds). The probe uses httpGet on port 8080 with a path '/healthz'. The probe is configured with initialDelaySeconds=10, periodSeconds=10, failureThreshold=3. The pod enters CrashLoopBackOff. What is the MOST likely cause?
Hard26A 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?
Medium27You have a Deployment named 'api' with 3 replicas. You need to ensure that new pods are not added to the Service's endpoints until the application is ready to serve traffic. Which probe configuration should you add to the pod spec?
Hard28A 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?
Medium29Which kubectl command streams logs from a pod named 'web-pod' in real-time?
Easy30Based on the exhibit, why is the container being killed and restarted?
Hard31You are a platform engineer at a company that runs a microservices architecture on Kubernetes. The application consists of a frontend service (Node.js), a backend API (Go), and a PostgreSQL database. All components are deployed in the same namespace 'production'. Recently, the backend API has been experiencing intermittent 503 errors from the frontend. The backend API Pods have CPU limits set to 500m and memory limits to 256Mi. The backend API exposes metrics at /metrics and has a liveness probe (HTTP GET /healthz) and a readiness probe (HTTP GET /ready). You notice that during traffic spikes, the backend API Pods are restarted frequently. You examine the metrics and see that memory usage spikes to 250Mi during high load. What is the most likely cause of the restarts and 503 errors?
Hard32You have a Deployment with a liveness probe that fails intermittently, causing the pod to restart. You want to reduce the sensitivity of the probe so that it only restarts after 3 consecutive failures. Which probe parameter should you adjust?
Hard33Which command streams logs from a pod in real-time?
Easy34A 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?
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Frequently asked questions
- What does the Application Observability and Maintenance domain cover on the CKAD exam?
- Application Observability and Maintenance questions test whether you can apply the concept in context, not just recognise a definition.
- How many questions are in this domain?
- This page lists all 34 Application Observability and Maintenance questions in the CKAD question bank. The actual exam draws from this domain proportionally to its weighting in the official exam blueprint.
- What is the best way to practise this domain?
- Start with a short focused session (10 questions) to identify gaps, then work through explanations. Repeat with a longer session once the weak areas feel solid.
- Can I practise only Application Observability and Maintenance questions?
- Yes — the session launcher on this page filters questions to this domain only. Choose any session length for inline explanations and scoring.