Practice for the Kubernetes and Cloud Native Associate (KCNA) exam with 15 exam-style practice questions, instant answer reveals, and concise explanations of every correct answer. Topics include: In service meshes, which project is commonly used to handle both incoming and outgoing traffic?. Follow @CertPunch and visit certpunch.com for more certification practice exams and study content.
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What you will practice
- In service meshes, which project is commonly used to handle both incoming and outgoing traffic?
- Which of these technologies is incompatible with the Kubernetes Container Runtime Interface (CRI)?
- When creating containers using multistage builds in Docker, what technique can you employ to reduce the size…
- When managing Kubernetes objects, which feature is exclusively designed to hold non-identifying metadata for…
- What are the four types of Kubernetes Services?
- Which Kubernetes resource is most useful for running tasks on a predefined schedule?
Answers and explanations
Tap a question to expand the answer and the exam reasoning. Try to commit to your own pick first.
Q1. In service meshes, which project is commonly used to handle both incoming and outgoing traffic?
Answer: D. Envoy Proxy
Envoy is the default data plane proxy for popular service meshes like Istio. While NGINX is heavily used for standard Ingress routing, Envoy dominates microservice communication by managing east-west traffic between Pods.
Q2. Which of these technologies is incompatible with the Kubernetes Container Runtime Interface (CRI)?
Answer: D. VirtualBox
VirtualBox is a virtualization platform for running virtual machines, not a container runtime. For the exam, remember that valid CRI implementations include containerd and CRI-O, whereas VirtualBox simply manages VMs.
Q3. When creating containers using multistage builds in Docker, what technique can you employ to reduce the size of the final container image?
Answer: D. Utilise multiple build stages to discard unnecessary build artifacts and dependencies
Using multiple build stages lets you copy only the final artifacts to a tiny base image, discarding compiler dependencies. Squashing is an outdated approach, and environment variables do not meaningfully reduce image size.
Q4. When managing Kubernetes objects, which feature is exclusively designed to hold non-identifying metadata for external usage?
Answer: A. Annotations
Annotations attach arbitrary non-identifying metadata to objects for external tools. Labels are used for identifying and selecting objects, whereas the other distractors describe entirely different operational features.
Q5. What are the four types of Kubernetes Services?
Answer: A. ClusterIP, NodePort, LoadBalancer, ExternalName
The four Kubernetes Service types are ClusterIP, NodePort, LoadBalancer, and ExternalName. Remembering these core network routing methods is crucial, as the distractors use fake concepts like NodeLink.
Q6. Which Kubernetes resource is most useful for running tasks on a predefined schedule?
Answer: C. CronJob
CronJob is the correct resource because it schedules Kubernetes jobs to run at fixed times or intervals, much like a traditional Linux cron daemon. DaemonSets ensure one pod runs on every node, while StatefulSets and Deployments maintain ongoing workloads rather than scheduled tasks.
Q7. Which Kubernetes resource is responsible for dynamically autoscaling the resources (like CPU and memory) of pods?
Answer: C. Vertical Pod Autoscaler
Vertical Pod Autoscaler is correct because it automatically adjusts the CPU and memory requests and limits for existing containers. Horizontal Pod Autoscaler instead changes the number of running pods, while Cluster Autoscaler modifies the underlying node count.
Q8. In Kubernetes, which component is a part of the node infrastructure rather than the control plane?
Answer: B. kube-proxy
kube-proxy is correct because it runs on every node and manages network routing rules for Services. The other three choices are core control plane components: etcd stores state, the API server exposes the API, and the scheduler assigns pods to nodes.
Q9. Which Kubernetes autoscaling solution has the capability to scale workloads down to zero pods?
Answer: D. Kubernetes Event-Driven Autoscaling (KEDA)
KEDA is correct because it is an event-driven component that can scale deployments from zero to many pods based on external triggers. The default Horizontal Pod Autoscaler typically requires baseline metrics, meaning it generally cannot scale workloads to zero.
Q10. In Kubernetes, which API resource is specifically designed to control ingress and egress traffic to and from pods at the network layer?
Answer: C. NetworkPolicy
NetworkPolicy is correct because it acts as a firewall for pods by explicitly defining allowed ingress and egress network traffic. Ingress manages external HTTP routing into the cluster, while Services handle internal forwarding without providing traffic restriction capabilities.
Q11. What Kubernetes object type is designed to enforce a memory ceiling for the aggregate usage of Pods in a namespace?
Answer: A. ResourceQuota
ResourceQuota is the correct answer because it operates at the namespace level to limit the total aggregate compute resources consumed. LimitRange is a common distractor, but it is used to set default limits or enforce constraints on individual containers rather than the overall namespace total.
Q12. What is the primary function of the kubectl top command in Kubernetes?
Answer: A. To display the resource usage of nodes and pods in the cluster
The kubectl top command shows real-time CPU and memory usage for nodes and pods. Remember that it requires the Metrics Server to be running in your cluster, otherwise the command will fail.
Q13. When using kubectl to monitor and track the progress of a deployment rollout in Kubernetes, which command or option should you use?
Answer: A. kubectl rollout status deployment/<deployment-name>
The kubectl rollout status command is the standard way to watch a deployment's progress until it completes or fails. The kubectl monitor and track subcommands do not exist in the CLI.
Q14. In the context of etcd used in Kubernetes, what is the significance of the 1.5MB size limit for etcd?
Answer: C. It is the recommended maximum size for an individual value stored in etcd
The 1.5 MB limit is correct because etcd recommends keeping individual values small to maintain cluster performance and stability. Storing large objects in etcd can degrade database performance, so large files should use external object storage instead.
Q15. In the world of software development and continuous integration, what tool is widely used for automating building, testing, and deploying applications?
Answer: C. Jenkins
Jenkins is the correct answer because it is a widely used automation server for building, testing, and deploying code in continuous integration pipelines. While Git manages source code, Jenkins actively orchestrates the pipeline stages defined by the development team.
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