Kubernetes Assessment: Sample Questions | Bryq
Beginner
Intermediate
Advanced
These are three sample questions from Bryq’s Kubernetes assessment, a technical test for hiring DevOps engineers, platform engineers and cloud engineers. The full assessment covers three levels: beginner, intermediate and advanced, from core architecture and workload management to storage, resource management and scalability. Each question is multiple choice, with one correct answer out of four options.
Beginner
Intermediate
Question
A pod’s status shows CrashLoopBackOff. What does this mean?
Select your answer
The container keeps crashing after it starts, and Kubernetes is waiting before restarting it.
Kubernetes can’t download the container image.
The pod is waiting to be scheduled onto a node.
The pod has been deleted by a cluster administrator.
WHY IS THIS THE CORRECT ANSWER
CrashLoopBackOff means the container starts, exits with an error, and is restarted again and again, with Kubernetes waiting longer between each attempt. Checking the pod’s logs with kubectl logs usually shows why. Image download problems show up as ImagePullBackOff, and pods that can’t be scheduled stay Pending.
Intermediate
Intermediate
Question
A container is repeatedly terminated with the reason OOMKilled. What is the most likely cause?
Select your answer
The container is using more memory than its memory limit.
The container has exceeded its CPU limit.
The container is failing its readiness probe.
The node has run out of disk space.
WHY IS THIS THE CORRECT ANSWER
When a container uses more memory than its limit, it is killed and Kubernetes reports OOMKilled. Exceeding a CPU limit only slows (throttles) the container rather than killing it. Failing a readiness probe removes the pod from service traffic without restarting it.
Advanced
Intermediate
Question
A Deployment has 10 replicas, with maxSurge: 25% and maxUnavailable: 0. During a rolling update, what is the maximum number of pods that can be running at once?
Select your answer
13
10
12
15
WHY IS THIS THE CORRECT ANSWER
maxSurge is rounded up, so 25% of 10 replicas allows 3 extra pods, for a maximum of 13 during the update. With maxUnavailable set to 0, the Deployment never drops below 10 available pods, so old pods are only removed once new ones are ready.
