CKAD Application Deployment Practice Question
You are using the Recreate strategy for a Deployment. What happens during an update?
⚠ Common exam trap
The CKAD exam often tests the distinction between Recreate and RollingUpdate strategies, and the trap here is that candidates confuse the Recreate strategy's all-at-once termination with the RollingUpdate strategy's gradual replacement, especially when they see 'update' and assume zero-downtime behavior.
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
✓
All existing pods are terminated before new pods are created
The Recreate strategy terminates all existing pods before creating new ones. This is defined in the Deployment's `strategy.type: Recreate` field, which ensures that old Pods are deleted first, and only after they are fully terminated are new Pods created. This guarantees no overlapping versions run simultaneously, but it also causes downtime during the update.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
New pods are created before old ones are terminated
Why it's wrong here
This describes the RollingUpdate strategy with a positive maxSurge, which creates extra new pods alongside existing ones before terminating any old pods. Recreate explicitly forbids this: the Deployment controller scales the old ReplicaSet to zero first, so no new pod can be created until all old pods are gone. Allowing new pods to start early would create a mixed-version state, defeating Recreate's purpose.
- ✗
Pods are updated in-place with a rolling update
Why it's wrong here
Recreate does not perform in-place updates; Kubernetes pod templates are immutable, so any change to the image or spec requires deleting and recreating pods. The Recreate strategy achieves this by removing the entire old ReplicaSet before creating a new one, rather than incrementally swapping pods. The phrase 'rolling update' specifically refers to the other Deployment strategy, making this option doubly incorrect for Recreate.
- ✓
All existing pods are terminated before new pods are created
Why this is correct
This is the defining behavior of the Recreate strategy: when a Deployment's pod template changes, the controller sets the old ReplicaSet's desired replicas to zero, waits for all existing pods to terminate, and only then scales up the new ReplicaSet. This guarantees zero overlap between old and new versions, at the cost of complete downtime during the rollout. It is correct because the rollout is strictly sequential, never concurrent.
- ✗
Some old pods remain running until new ones become ready
Why it's wrong here
This describes RollingUpdate behavior, especially when maxUnavailable is zero, where old pods are kept alive to maintain service availability while new pods are created and become ready before any old pod is deleted. In Recreate, all old pods are terminated immediately before any new pod is scheduled, so there is never a window where old and new versions coexist. Retaining old pods until new ones are ready would require surge capacity and is intentionally avoided by Recreate.
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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.