CV0-004 Startup probe Practice Question
An engineer is deploying a Kubernetes application on EKS and needs to ensure that pods are only considered healthy after a startup delay, and that traffic stops to unhealthy pods. Which two probe types should be configured in the deployment manifest?
⚠ Common exam trap
Candidates often confuse startup probes with liveness probes. Startup probes defer other probes until initialization completes, while liveness probes restart pods that become unresponsive after startup.
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
✓
Startup probe and readiness probe
Startup probes delay health checks until the pod has had time to initialize, which satisfies the startup delay requirement. Readiness probes control when the pod receives traffic, stopping traffic to unhealthy pods. Together, they meet both needs. Liveness probes restart unhealthy pods but do not handle startup delay or traffic routing.
Answer analysis
Option-by-option breakdown
For each option: why learners choose it and why it is or isn't the right answer here.
- ✓
Startup probe and readiness probe
Why this is correct
A startup probe suppresses liveness and readiness checks until the container initialises, preventing premature restarts, while the readiness probe removes the pod from Service endpoints when unhealthy. Together they satisfy both the startup-delay and traffic-stopping requirements.
- ✗
Liveness probe and startup probe
Why it's wrong here
Liveness and startup probes omit the readiness probe, so traffic continues reaching pods that are running but not yet able to serve requests. This pairing suits workloads where container restart on failure matters but endpoint removal is not required.
- ✗
Only readiness probe
Why it's wrong here
A readiness probe alone removes unhealthy pods from Service endpoints, but it cannot restart a container that has hung, and it provides no startup delay mechanism. It is the correct choice when the only requirement is controlling which pods receive traffic.
- ✗
Readiness probe and liveness probe
Why it's wrong here
Readiness and liveness probes omit the startup probe, so a slow-starting container can be killed by the liveness probe before it finishes initialising. This pairing suits applications that start quickly and only need ongoing health checks and traffic gating.
Go deeper
Related to this question
About these practice questions
Courseiva writes every CV0-004 question from scratch — 834 in total, each with an explanation and a wrong-answer breakdown. None are copied from real exams or dumps. Learn why practice questions differ from exam dumps →
JA
Written by Johnson Ajibi, MSc IT Security
Senior Network & Security Engineer · founder of Courseiva
This CV0-004 practice question is part of Courseiva's free CompTIA 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 CV0-004 exam.