KCNA Cloud Native Architecture Practice Question
An organization wants to implement a serverless function that scales to zero when not in use. Which technology is specifically designed to achieve this on Kubernetes?
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
✓
Knative
Knative Serving supports scale-to-zero, automatically scaling down pods when they are not receiving requests. This is a key feature of serverless on Kubernetes.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Knative
Why this is correct
Knative Serving provides automatic scaling, including scaling to zero.
- ✗
Prometheus
Why it's wrong here
Prometheus is a monitoring system, not for serverless.
- ✗
Istio
Why it's wrong here
Istio is a service mesh, not a serverless platform.
- ✗
Kubernetes Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA)
Why it's wrong here
HPA can scale to zero only with custom metrics, but Knative provides built-in scale-to-zero.
Quick reference
Cloud Service Model Comparison
| Model | You Manage | Provider Manages | Examples |
|---|---|---|---|
| IaaS | OS, runtime, apps, data | Hardware, hypervisor, networking | EC2, Azure VMs, GCP Compute Engine |
| PaaS | Apps and data | OS, runtime, middleware, hardware | Elastic Beanstalk, Azure App Service |
| SaaS | Data and settings only | Everything else | Microsoft 365, Salesforce, Workday |
| FaaS / Serverless | Function code only | Infra, scaling, runtime | Lambda, Azure Functions, Cloud Run |
| CaaS | Containers and apps | Kubernetes, OS, hardware | EKS, AKS, GKE |
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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.