KCNA Cloud Native Application Delivery Practice Question
Which deployment strategy updates pods incrementally, replacing old pods with new ones while ensuring availability?
⚠ Common exam trap
CNCF often tests the distinction between deployment strategies by confusing candidates with 'Canary deployment' because it also involves gradual traffic shifting, but the key difference is that Canary does not replace pods incrementally—it runs both versions concurrently and requires external traffic routing.
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
✓
Rolling update
The Rolling update strategy is the correct answer because it incrementally replaces old pods with new ones while maintaining application availability. In Kubernetes, a rolling update updates pods one by one (or in small batches), ensuring that a specified number of pods remain available throughout the process. This is achieved by gradually scaling down the old ReplicaSet and scaling up the new one, controlled by parameters like `maxSurge` and `maxUnavailable` in the Deployment spec.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✗
Canary deployment
Why it's wrong here
Canary routes a small percentage of traffic to new version.
- ✗
Blue-green deployment
Why it's wrong here
Blue-green runs two full environments and switches traffic.
- ✗
Recreate
Why it's wrong here
Recreate kills all old pods before creating new ones.
- ✓
Rolling update
Why this is correct
This is the default Kubernetes deployment strategy.
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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.