KCNA - Container Orchestration - Section 2.4

Identify the cause of common workload failures from the symptoms a cluster reports.

ImagePullBackOff, CrashLoopBackOff, Pending due to insufficient resources or unsatisfied affinity, OOMKilled, and failing readiness probes. Candidates should map a described symptom to its most likely cause and the next diagnostic step.

ImagePullBackOffCrashLoopBackOffOOMKilledPending podskubectl logs and events

Practice question for this objective

Free sampleContainer Orchestrationmedium

A HorizontalPodAutoscaler has already raised a Deployment to its maximum replicas, but several of the new Pods remain in Pending state with a message that no node has enough allocatable CPU to schedule them. Every existing node is already fully committed. Which cluster component is responsible for resolving this by adding capacity?

  • AThe HorizontalPodAutoscaler raising the replica ceiling
  • BThe cluster autoscaler watching for unschedulable Pods Correct
  • CA LimitRange loosening per-container requests
  • DThe kube-scheduler retrying placement more aggressively
The cluster autoscaler adds worker nodes when Pods are unschedulable because existing nodes lack allocatable resources. The cluster autoscaler continuously checks for Pods stuck Pending due to insufficient resources and, when it finds them, requests new nodes from the infrastructure so the scheduler gains somewhere to place those Pods.

Why A is wrong: Tempting because the HPA is already involved, but it only adjusts replica count and is at its maximum; adding still more Pods cannot help when no node has capacity to run them.

Why B is correct: Correct because the cluster autoscaler detects Pods that cannot be scheduled for lack of node resources and provisions additional nodes so the pending Pods can be placed.

Why C is wrong: Tempting because request sizing affects scheduling, but a LimitRange sets defaults and bounds for container requests and limits and cannot create the extra node capacity the Pods need.

Why D is wrong: Tempting because the scheduler is what leaves the Pods Pending, but it can only place Pods onto existing nodes and has no ability to add nodes to the cluster.

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