CKAD Liveness probe Practice Question
Which THREE of the following are valid types of probes in Kubernetes? (Select 3)
⚠ Common exam trap
The CKAD exam expects you to know that there are three valid probe types: Liveness, Readiness, and Startup. This question asks for three, so all three correct options must be selected.
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
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Liveness probe
Liveness, Readiness, and Startup probes are all valid probe types in Kubernetes. Liveness probes check if a container is still running and can restart it if needed. Readiness probes determine if a container is ready to serve traffic. Startup probes delay liveness and readiness checks until the container has started successfully. Options B (Survival) and D (Health) are not valid Kubernetes probe types.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
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Liveness probe
Why this is correct
Liveness probe is a standard Kubernetes probe type that checks the health of a running container and restarts it if the probe fails. It helps recover from deadlocks or stuck processes where the container is still running but no longer functioning correctly. When a liveness probe fails, the kubelet kills the container and replaces it according to the pod's restart policy, enabling self-healing applications.
- ✗
Survival probe
Why it's wrong here
Survival probe is not a recognized Kubernetes probe type; the correct term is liveness probe, which checks whether a container is alive. Kubernetes defines only three probe types—liveness, readiness, and startup—so any other name like 'survivalProbe' is invalid. Attempting to configure such a field in a Pod specification would fail API schema validation because no such field exists in the Pod spec.
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Readiness probe
Why this is correct
Readiness probe is a standard Kubernetes probe that determines whether a container is ready to accept network traffic. If it fails, the container's IP address is removed from all Service endpoints so no traffic is routed to it, but the container is not killed or restarted. The probe continues to run for the container's lifetime, allowing it to be added back to Service endpoints once it becomes ready again. This is ideal for applications that need to load data, warm caches, or establish connections before serving requests.
- ✗
Health probe
Why it's wrong here
Health probe is a generic term used in other orchestration systems, not a standard Kubernetes probe type. In Kubernetes, the functionality is explicitly divided into liveness, readiness, and startup probes, each with a distinct role: restarting unhealthy containers, routing traffic, and gating startup. Using 'healthProbe' as a field in a Kubernetes manifest would be rejected by the API server because it is not part of the probe schema defined in the Pod spec.
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Startup probe
Why this is correct
Startup probe is a valid Kubernetes probe type introduced in version 1.16 specifically to accommodate containers with slow startup times. It runs once at container start, and only after it succeeds does the kubelet begin executing liveness and readiness probes, preventing premature restarts of containers that need extra initialization. Once successful, the startup probe stops running unless the container restarts, serving as a gatekeeper for the other probes.
Go deeper
Related to this question
Learn chapter
Services, Service Types, and Load Balancing
Key term
Readiness Probes
A Kubernetes mechanism that checks if a container is ready to start accepting traffic and serve requests.
Key term
Liveness Probes
A liveness probe is a Kubernetes health check that tells the system whether a container is running properly and should be kept alive or restarted.
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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.