KCNA Kubernetes Fundamentals Practice Question
A team wants to minimize downtime during a Deployment rollout. Which strategy ensures that new pods are created before old pods are terminated?
⚠ Common exam trap
Many candidates confuse `maxSurge` and `maxUnavailable` values, mistakenly thinking that allowing both a surge and an unavailable pod (option D) is safer, when in fact it can still cause a temporary capacity drop if the new pod is not ready before the old one is terminated.
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
✓
Set strategy type to 'RollingUpdate' with maxSurge=1, maxUnavailable=0.
Setting `maxSurge=1` and `maxUnavailable=0` in a RollingUpdate strategy ensures that one additional pod is created above the desired replica count before any existing pod is terminated. This guarantees zero downtime by maintaining full capacity during the rollout, as new pods become ready before old ones are removed.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Set strategy type to 'Recreate'.
Why it's wrong here
Recreate terminates every existing pod before any new pod starts, guaranteeing downtime during the gap — the opposite of the requirement. It is tempting because it is the simplest strategy and suits stateless dev workloads where brief outages are acceptable, but it cannot satisfy zero-downtime rollouts.
- ✗
Set strategy type to 'RollingUpdate' with maxSurge=0, maxUnavailable=1.
Why it's wrong here
maxSurge=0 forbids creating extra pods, so Kubernetes must terminate an old pod to free capacity before starting a new one — violating the new-before-old requirement. It is tempting because RollingUpdate is the right strategy, but maxSurge must be at least 1 to allow surge creation.
- ✓
Set strategy type to 'RollingUpdate' with maxSurge=1, maxUnavailable=0.
Why this is correct
RollingUpdate replaces pods incrementally; maxUnavailable=0 forbids any capacity drop, so the controller must create new pods before terminating old ones. maxSurge=1 permits one extra pod above the desired replica count, guaranteeing the zero-downtime constraint the team requires.
- ✗
Set strategy type to 'RollingUpdate' with maxSurge=1, maxUnavailable=1.
Why it's wrong here
With maxUnavailable=1, one old pod may be terminated before its replacement is ready, so new pods are not always created first. It is tempting because RollingUpdate is the correct strategy family, but the specific parameters must set maxUnavailable=0 to guarantee surge-before-terminate behaviour.
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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.