ACE Practice Question: A GKE Deployment is running 3 replicas and…
This ACE practice question tests your understanding of a gke deployment is running 3 replicas and…. Read the scenario carefully and evaluate each option against the stated constraints before committing to an answer. After answering, compare your reasoning against the explanation and wrong-answer breakdown below. Once you have made your selection, read the full explanation to reinforce the concept and understand why each distractor is designed to mislead on exam day.
A GKE Deployment is running 3 replicas and receiving steady traffic. A junior engineer runs `kubectl scale deployment api-service --replicas=0` to 'stop it temporarily'. What happens to traffic during and after this command?
Answer choices
Why each option matters
Good practice is not just finding the correct option. The wrong answers often show the exact trap the exam wants you to fall into.
Distractor review
GKE detects the replica count is 0 and automatically restores it to maintain high availability
GKE respects the desired replica count set by the user — it doesn't override explicit user commands to scale to 0.
Distractor review
Traffic is paused and queued by the Service until replicas are restored
Kubernetes Services don't queue traffic — with 0 backends, requests fail immediately with connection errors.
Best answer
All Pods are terminated immediately; the Service has no backends and requests fail until replicas are restored
`scale --replicas=0` terminates all Pods. The Service loses all endpoints and incoming traffic fails. Running `kubectl scale --replicas=3` restores the Pods.
Distractor review
The Deployment is paused but Pods continue running until the next rollout
`scale --replicas=0` doesn't pause a Deployment — it immediately terminates all Pods. `kubectl rollout pause` pauses rollout but leaves existing Pods running.
Common exam trap
Common exam trap: NAT rules depend on direction and matching traffic
NAT is not only about the public address. The inside/outside interface roles and the ACL or rule that matches traffic are just as important.
Technical deep dive
How to think about this question
NAT questions usually test address translation, overload/PAT behaviour, static mappings and whether the right traffic is being translated. Read the interface direction and address terms carefully.
KKey Concepts to Remember
- Static NAT maps one inside address to one outside address.
- PAT allows many inside hosts to share one public address using ports.
- Inside local and inside global describe the private and translated addresses.
- NAT ACLs identify traffic for translation, not always security filtering.
TExam Day Tips
- Identify inside and outside interfaces first.
- Check whether the scenario needs static NAT, dynamic NAT or PAT.
- Do not confuse NAT matching ACLs with normal packet-filtering intent.
Key takeaway
NAT direction and interface roles matter as much as the IP address mapping. Inside/outside designation controls which traffic is translated.
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FAQ
Questions learners often ask
What does this ACE question test?
Static NAT maps one inside address to one outside address.
What is the correct answer to this question?
The correct answer is: All Pods are terminated immediately; the Service has no backends and requests fail until replicas are restored — Setting replicas to 0 terminates all Pods in the Deployment immediately. If the Deployment is behind a Service, the Service has no healthy backends, causing all requests to fail (connection refused or 503). To restore service, the replicas count must be set back to a positive number.
What should I do if I get this ACE question wrong?
Review the four NAT address types (inside local, inside global, outside local, outside global), PAT port overload, and static vs dynamic NAT use cases. Then practise related ACE NAT questions on configuration and troubleshooting.
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