CKAD Application Deployment Practice Question
You have a Deployment that uses the Recreate strategy. You update the container image. What happens to the existing pods?
⚠ Common exam trap
CKAD often tests the confusion between Recreate and RollingUpdate strategies, catching candidates who assume all Deployments roll out gradually by default.
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
✓
Existing pods are terminated first, then new pods are created
The Recreate strategy terminates all existing pods before creating new ones, causing a brief outage. This is the defining behavior of Recreate and contrasts with RollingUpdate, which replaces pods gradually.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Existing pods are not affected; you must manually delete them
Why it's wrong here
This is incorrect because the Recreate strategy is fully automated by the Deployment controller; it immediately terminates all old pods without any manual intervention. Existing pods are not left running; the controller scales down the old ReplicaSet to zero before scaling up the new one. Manual deletion is never required for a Deployment update—the system handles the pod lifecycle according to the strategy.
- ✓
Existing pods are terminated first, then new pods are created
Why this is correct
With the Recreate strategy, the Deployment controller first scales the old ReplicaSet to zero, ensuring all existing pods are terminated and removed. Only after all old pods have reached a terminated state does it scale up the new ReplicaSet, creating replacement pods. This guarantees that there is no overlap between old and new pod versions during the update.
- ✗
Existing pods are gradually terminated while new pods are created
Why it's wrong here
This description matches the RollingUpdate strategy, not Recreate. In RollingUpdate, the controller incrementally terminates old pods and creates new ones, maintaining availability above a configured threshold. The Recreate strategy, by contrast, deliberately causes downtime because it terminates every old pod before any new pod is scheduled, never running both versions simultaneously.
- ✗
New pods are created alongside existing pods, then old pods are terminated
Why it's wrong here
This behavior corresponds to a RollingUpdate configuration with a surge, where the controller first spins up new pods alongside existing ones before scaling down the old ReplicaSet. Recreate never allows old and new pods to coexist; it strictly follows a terminate-all-then-create-all sequence. If both versions ran concurrently at any point, the update would be a rolling deployment, not a recreate deployment.
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Written and reviewed by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
Last reviewed September 2026 · checked against the official CNCF exam blueprint
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.