This KCNA practice question tests your understanding of kubernetes fundamentals. Read the scenario carefully and evaluate each option against the stated constraints before committing to an answer. 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.
A development team deploys a microservice that crashes every few minutes. The deployment uses a single replica, and the pod restarts repeatedly. Which Kubernetes feature should be enabled to ensure the service remains available during failures?
Answer the question above first, then reveal the full breakdown to understand why each option is right or wrong.
Correct answer & explanation
✓
Increase the replicas in the Deployment to at least 2
Increasing the replicas to at least 2 ensures that if one pod crashes, the other replica(s) can continue serving traffic, maintaining availability. With only a single replica, the service becomes unavailable every time the pod restarts. This is the most direct way to provide redundancy and fault tolerance for a stateless microservice.
Key principle: Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
✗
Move the deployment to a separate namespace
Why it's wrong here
Namespaces provide logical separation but do not affect pod resilience.
✓
Increase the replicas in the Deployment to at least 2
Why this is correct
Increasing replicas allows the ReplicaSet to maintain multiple copies, so if one crashes, others still serve traffic.
Related concept
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
✗
Store the application configuration in a ConfigMap
Why it's wrong here
ConfigMaps decouple configuration from pods but do not improve availability.
✗
Add a readiness probe to the pod
Why it's wrong here
Readiness probes control when a pod receives traffic, but do not create additional replicas.
Common exam traps
Common exam trap: answer the scenario, not the keyword
The trap here is that candidates often confuse health probes (readiness/liveness) with redundancy; while probes help detect and manage unhealthy pods, they do not provide the multiple running instances needed to maintain availability during a crash.
Detailed technical explanation
How to think about this question
Under the hood, a Deployment manages a ReplicaSet, which ensures the desired number of pod replicas are running. When a pod crashes, the ReplicaSet controller creates a replacement, but with only one replica, there is a window of unavailability during the restart. Increasing replicas to 2 or more allows the service to remain available because the other replica(s) continue serving while the failed pod is recreated. In real-world scenarios, this is critical for meeting Service Level Objectives (SLOs) and avoiding downtime during rolling updates or node failures.
KKey Concepts to Remember
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
Find the constraint that changes the correct option.
Eliminate answers that are true in general but not in this case.
TExam Day Tips
→Watch for words such as best, first, most likely and least administrative effort.
→Review why wrong options are wrong, not only why the correct option is correct.
Key takeaway
Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option.
Real-world example
How this comes up in practice
A practitioner preparing for the KCNA exam encounters this exact type of scenario on the job. The correct answer here is not the most general option — it is the best answer for the specific constraint described. Answer the scenario, not the keyword: identify the specific constraint before choosing the most familiar-sounding option. Real exam questions reward reading the full scenario before eliminating options, because the constraint defines which answer fits.
Related glossary terms
Concepts from this question explained
These glossary pages explain the core terms tested in this KCNA question in full detail.
Kubernetes Fundamentals — This question tests Kubernetes Fundamentals — Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer..
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: Increase the replicas in the Deployment to at least 2 — Increasing the replicas to at least 2 ensures that if one pod crashes, the other replica(s) can continue serving traffic, maintaining availability. With only a single replica, the service becomes unavailable every time the pod restarts. This is the most direct way to provide redundancy and fault tolerance for a stateless microservice.
What should I do if I get this KCNA question wrong?
Identify which exam domain this question belongs to, review the core concept, then practise similar questions from the same domain.
What is the key concept behind this question?
Read the scenario before looking for a memorised answer.
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Question Discussion
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