KCNA Cloud Native Architecture Practice Question
A team is designing a cloud-native system that must maintain high availability across multiple cloud regions. The application uses Kubernetes clusters in each region. Which approach best ensures that the system can tolerate a full region failure while minimizing complexity?
⚠ Common exam trap
CNCF often tests the misconception that active-active with synchronous replication is always the best for high availability, but the trap here is that it introduces unnecessary complexity and cost for most use cases, while active-passive with a global load balancer offers a simpler, production-proven alternative for tolerating region failures.
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
✓
Use a global load balancer with active-passive regional failover
A global load balancer with active-passive regional failover provides a straightforward way to route traffic to a healthy secondary region when the primary fails, without the complexity of multi-region Kubernetes control planes or synchronous replication. This approach leverages DNS-based or anycast routing to detect region failure and redirect traffic, ensuring high availability while keeping the operational overhead low.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Deploy a single Kubernetes cluster spanning all regions
Why it's wrong here
Not supported by Kubernetes due to latency and network boundaries.
- ✓
Use a global load balancer with active-passive regional failover
Why this is correct
Simpler to implement and manage while ensuring failover.
- ✗
Run active-active in all regions with synchronous data replication
Why it's wrong here
Complex and high network latency.
- ✗
Implement manual failover procedures documented in runbooks
Why it's wrong here
Too slow for high availability requirements.
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JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This KCNA 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 KCNA exam.