This CKAD practice question tests your understanding of application deployment. The scenario asks you to isolate a root cause — eliminate options that address a different problem before choosing. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
You have a Deployment with the following strategy: type: Recreate. What happens when you update the pod template?
Old pods are terminated first, then new pods are created
Correct for Recreate strategy.
New pods are created first, then old pods are terminated
Why wrong: That's rolling update behavior.
Pods are updated in-place without termination
Why wrong: Kubernetes doesn't update pods in-place for Deployments.
The update is rejected because Recreate is not a valid strategy
Why wrong: Recreate is a valid strategy.
Answer choices
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
Old pods are terminated first, then new pods are created
The Recreate strategy in a Kubernetes Deployment first terminates all existing Pods before creating new ones. When the pod template is updated, the Deployment controller scales down the ReplicaSet to 0 replicas, waits for all Pods to terminate, then scales up the new ReplicaSet to the desired number of replicas. This ensures zero overlap between old and new Pods, which is useful for workloads that cannot run concurrently.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Answer analysis
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
Old pods are terminated first, then new pods are created
Why this is correct
Correct for Recreate strategy.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
New pods are created first, then old pods are terminated
Why it's wrong here
That's rolling update behavior.
Pods are updated in-place without termination
Why it's wrong here
Kubernetes doesn't update pods in-place for Deployments.
The update is rejected because Recreate is not a valid strategy
Why it's wrong here
Recreate is a valid strategy.
Common exam traps
The trap here is that candidates confuse Recreate with RollingUpdate, assuming new Pods are always created first to minimize downtime, but Recreate deliberately sacrifices availability for safety by terminating all old Pods before starting new ones.
Detailed technical explanation
Under the hood, the Deployment controller manages two ReplicaSets: the old one and the new one. With Recreate, the controller first sets the old ReplicaSet's replicas to 0, then waits for all Pods to reach the Terminated phase (via the Pod lifecycle and kubelet status updates) before setting the new ReplicaSet's replicas to the desired count. This behavior is critical for stateful workloads that require exclusive access to resources, such as databases or applications using persistent volumes with ReadWriteOnce access mode, where concurrent Pods would cause conflicts.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
A small business has 20 workstations on the 192.168.1.0/24 network and one public IP from its ISP. The router uses PAT (NAT overload) so all 20 devices share one public address using different source ports. NAT questions test whether you understand the four address terms and which direction each translation applies.
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FAQ
Application Deployment — This question tests Application Deployment — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
The correct answer is: Old pods are terminated first, then new pods are created — The Recreate strategy in a Kubernetes Deployment first terminates all existing Pods before creating new ones. When the pod template is updated, the Deployment controller scales down the ReplicaSet to 0 replicas, waits for all Pods to terminate, then scales up the new ReplicaSet to the desired number of replicas. This ensures zero overlap between old and new Pods, which is useful for workloads that cannot run concurrently.
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Last reviewed: Jun 25, 2026
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.
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