KCNA Kubernetes Fundamentals Practice Question
A DevOps engineer needs to expose a set of pods running an HTTP API to external clients. The pods are stateless and should be load-balanced. Which Kubernetes resource should they use?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many exam-takers confuse 'exposing to external clients' with internal-only services, leading them to pick ClusterIP (C) or assume Ingress (B) can work without a Service, while the question explicitly requires load balancing for stateless pods, making LoadBalancer the direct and correct answer.
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
✓
Service of type LoadBalancer
A Service of type LoadBalancer is the correct choice because it provisions an external load balancer (e.g., an AWS ELB or Azure LB) that distributes incoming traffic across the pods, exposing the stateless HTTP API to external clients. This resource automatically assigns a public IP and handles load balancing without requiring manual proxy configuration, making it ideal for external access to stateless workloads.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
StatefulSet with a headless Service
Why it's wrong here
StatefulSet is for stateful applications, not needed here.
- ✗
Ingress resource without a Service
Why it's wrong here
Ingress requires a backend Service to route traffic to pods.
- ✗
Service of type ClusterIP
Why it's wrong here
ClusterIP is only accessible inside the cluster.
- ✓
Service of type LoadBalancer
Why this is correct
LoadBalancer exposes the service externally and provides load balancing.
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Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
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