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KCNA Prep Questions

KCNA Full 60-Question Mock Exam (with Answers)

Format: Multiple Choice (single best answer).
Use this like the real exam: attempt all questions, then check answers at the end.

Kubernetes Fundamentals (Q1–20)

Q1. What is the smallest deployable unit in Kubernetes?
a) Container
b) Node
c) Pod
d) Deployment
Answer: c) Pod

Q2. Which component stores the entire cluster state?
a) kubelet
b) etcd
c) Controller Manager
d) Scheduler
Answer: b) etcd

Q3. Which object ensures the desired number of Pods is always running?
a) Deployment
b) Pod
c) Service
d) ConfigMap
Answer: a) Deployment

Q4. Which command lists all resources in a namespace?
a) kubectl list all
b) kubectl get all
c) kubectl show resources
d) kubectl resources list
Answer: b) kubectl get all

Q5. Which workload runs one Pod per node?
a) Deployment
b) DaemonSet
c) StatefulSet
d) Job
Answer: b) DaemonSet

Q6. Which workload guarantees stable network identities across Pod restarts?
a) Deployment
b) DaemonSet
c) StatefulSet
d) ReplicaSet
Answer: c) StatefulSet

Q7. Default restart policy for Pods?
a) OnFailure
b) Never
c) Always
d) Manual
Answer: c) Always

Q8. Which kubelet component manages node networking rules for services?
a) kube-scheduler
b) kube-proxy
c) API server
d) etcd
Answer: b) kube-proxy

Q9. Default namespace if not specified?
a) kube-system
b) default
c) kube-public
d) cluster-default
Answer: b) default

Q10. Which namespace hosts cluster add-ons like CoreDNS?
a) default
b) kube-system
c) kube-addons
d) kube-dns
Answer: b) kube-system

Q11. Which command shows Pod logs?
a) kubectl get logs pod
b) kubectl logs
c) kubectl describe pod logs
d) kubectl pod logs
Answer: b) kubectl logs

Q12. What happens if a Pod fails a liveness probe?
a) Restarted
b) Marked NotReady
c) Deleted permanently
d) Ignored
Answer: a) Restarted

Q13. Headless Service clusterIP value?
a) null
b) 127.0.0.1
c) None
d) Empty string
Answer: c) None

Q14. How to view resources on all namespaces?
a) kubectl get all -A
b) kubectl get all --global
c) kubectl get all namespaces
d) kubectl get all --all
Answer: a) kubectl get all -A

Q15. Command to scale a deployment to 5 replicas?
a) kubectl resize deployment nginx 5
b) kubectl scale deployment nginx --replicas=5
c) kubectl replica nginx=5
d) kubectl scale pod nginx --count=5
Answer: b)

Q16. Which object stores sensitive data?
a) ConfigMap
b) Secret
c) Pod
d) Deployment
Answer: b) Secret

Q17. Secrets are stored in which format by default?
a) Encrypted AES
b) Base64 encoded
c) Plaintext
d) Hashed
Answer: b) Base64 encoded

Q18. How to rollback a deployment?
a) kubectl restart deploy
b) kubectl scale down
c) kubectl rollout undo deploy
d) kubectl revert deploy
Answer: c)

Q19. Which YAML field specifies number of Pod replicas in Deployment?
a) spec.count
b) spec.replicas
c) spec.instances
d) spec.size
Answer: b) spec.replicas

Q20. What manages certificates and API auth in Kubernetes?
a) Controller Manager
b) API Server
c) Scheduler
d) kube-proxy
Answer: b) API Server


Container Orchestration (Q21–32)

Q21. Container runtime most commonly used with Kubernetes?
a) Docker
b) containerd
c) LXC
d) runc
Answer: b) containerd

Q22. Who schedules Pods to nodes?
a) kubelet
b) Scheduler
c) API server
d) etcd
Answer: b) Scheduler

Q23. What provides Pod-to-Pod networking?
a) CRI
b) CSI
c) CNI
d) RBAC
Answer: c) CNI

Q24. Which interface defines how storage is provided?
a) CNI
b) CRI
c) CSI
d) PVC
Answer: c) CSI

Q25. Which Service type exposes an application on each node’s IP at a static port?
a) ClusterIP
b) NodePort
c) LoadBalancer
d) Headless
Answer: b) NodePort

Q26. Ingress Controller manages?
a) Pod scheduling
b) External HTTP/HTTPS traffic
c) Cluster upgrades
d) Secrets management
Answer: b)

Q27. Service mesh purpose?
a) Monitor cluster
b) Manage container runtime
c) Secure and manage service-to-service traffic
d) Scale nodes
Answer: c)

Q28. Example of service mesh?
a) Istio
b) ArgoCD
c) Helm
d) Prometheus
Answer: a)

Q29. Which object binds a PersistentVolume to a Pod?
a) ConfigMap
b) PVC
c) Secret
d) Deployment
Answer: b) PVC

Q30. Node Affinity ensures?
a) Pods run on specific nodes
b) Services use specific ports
c) ConfigMaps apply to only one namespace
d) Pods can talk only to selected namespaces
Answer: a)

Q31. Taints prevent scheduling unless Pods have?
a) Affinity
b) Labels
c) Tolerations
d) Annotations
Answer: c) Tolerations

Q32. Default DNS suffix in Kubernetes cluster?
a) .local.cluster
b) .svc.cluster.local
c) .svc.cluster
d) .cluster.local
Answer: b)


Cloud Native Architecture (Q33–43)

Q33. Autoscale Pods based on CPU usage?
a) HPA
b) VPA
c) Cluster Autoscaler
d) CronJob
Answer: a) HPA

Q34. Scale nodes up/down automatically?
a) HPA
b) VPA
c) Cluster Autoscaler
d) Service Mesh
Answer: c)

Q35. Vertical Pod Autoscaler changes?
a) Pod count
b) Node count
c) Pod resource requests/limits
d) Node affinity rules
Answer: c)

Q36. CNCF full form?
a) Cloud Native Computing Foundation
b) Cloud Native Cluster Federation
c) Containerized Node Cluster Federation
d) Cloud Network Computing Framework
Answer: a)

Q37. What is serverless in Kubernetes?
a) Running nodes without kubelet
b) Event-driven workloads (Knative, OpenFaaS)
c) Running Pods without controllers
d) Scaling Pods manually
Answer: b)

Q38. Which CNCF project provides monitoring?
a) Prometheus
b) Fluentd
c) Jaeger
d) Linkerd
Answer: a)

Q39. Which CNCF project handles logging?
a) Prometheus
b) Fluentd
c) Envoy
d) Kubectl
Answer: b)

Q40. Which CNCF project provides tracing?
a) Jaeger
b) Envoy
c) Rook
d) Knative
Answer: a)

Q41. CNCF Sandbox projects are?
a) Stable
b) Early-stage/experimental
c) Deprecated
d) Vendor proprietary
Answer: b)

Q42. Graduated CNCF projects mean?
a) No longer supported
b) Widely adopted & mature
c) Experimental
d) Deprecated soon
Answer: b)

Q43. Governance in CNCF ensures?
a) Vendor lock-in
b) Open standards and neutrality
c) Only paid features
d) Centralized ownership
Answer: b)


Observability (Q44–49)

Q44. Tool used for metrics scraping and querying?
a) Fluentd
b) Jaeger
c) Prometheus
d) Helm
Answer: c)

Q45. Golden signals of observability?
a) CPU, Memory, Storage, Bandwidth
b) Latency, Traffic, Errors, Saturation
c) Requests, Responses, Retries, Caches
d) Health, State, Status, Pods
Answer: b)

Q46. Tool for log collection in CNCF ecosystem?
a) Prometheus
b) Fluentd
c) ArgoCD
d) Helm
Answer: b)

Q47. Command to see cluster events?
a) kubectl describe events
b) kubectl get events
c) kubectl events show
d) kubectl show logs
Answer: b)

Q48. Command to see Pod resource usage?
a) kubectl describe pod
b) kubectl top pod
c) kubectl get resources
d) kubectl usage pod
Answer: b)

Q49. If a Pod is Pending, which command helps troubleshoot?
a) kubectl logs
b) kubectl top pod
c) kubectl describe pod
d) kubectl rollout status
Answer: c)


Application Delivery (Q50–60)

Q50. GitOps means?
a) Using Git to track code only
b) Git as single source of truth for deployments
c) Git manages kubelet
d) Git manages secrets encryption
Answer: b)

Q51. Example of GitOps tool?
a) ArgoCD
b) Prometheus
c) Helm
d) Fluentd
Answer: a)

Q52. Rolling update strategy does what?
a) Replace all Pods at once
b) Gradually replace old Pods with new ones
c) Routes subset of traffic
d) Keeps old and new running in parallel with manual switch
Answer: b)

Q53. Canary deployment does what?
a) Gradually shifts traffic to new version
b) Instantly replaces old version
c) Creates new namespace
d) Deletes old version immediately
Answer: a)

Q54. Blue/Green deployment does what?
a) Runs new version alongside old, switches all traffic at once
b) Gradually shifts traffic
c) Deletes all old Pods first
d) Scales to zero
Answer: a)

Q55. CI focuses on?
a) Continuous Deployment only
b) Automated integration & testing
c) Service Mesh setup
d) Observability
Answer: b)

Q56. CD focuses on?
a) Code commits only
b) Delivery and deployment automation
c) Storage management
d) Node upgrades
Answer: b)

Q57. Helm is used for?
a) CI/CD pipelines
b) Kubernetes package management
c) Logging
d) Container runtime
Answer: b)

Q58. ConfigMap can be mounted as?
a) Network route
b) Environment variable or volume
c) Service type
d) Node label
Answer: b)

Q59. ArgoCD vs FluxCD key difference?
a) ArgoCD has UI, FluxCD is CLI/YAML driven
b) ArgoCD is storage, FluxCD is runtime
c) ArgoCD for monitoring, FluxCD for logging
d) ArgoCD = Helm replacement
Answer: a)

Q60. Command to create a Pod quickly?
a) kubectl create pod nginx
b) kubectl run nginx --image=nginx
c) kubectl new pod nginx
d) kubectl pod nginx run
Answer: b)


✅ Summary

  • Total Questions: 60
  • Passing: 45+ correct (75%)
  • Each domain covered in weight.
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