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Consul
Associate Prep

Sample questions - Consul Associate certification

  • 7min
  • |
  • Consul

The exam mainly consists of multiple choice and true/false questions. In addition, there are type-in-the-command and UI-based questions. Some of the multiple choice questions are scenario-based questions to test your understanding of Consul usages.

Below are some examples so you can familiarize yourself with the exam format.

True/false questions

Q1: When starting the Consul agent with the consul agent -dev command, all core security features will be initialized with the agent.

🔘 True
🔘 False

❌ Incorrect: True
✅ Correct: False

Q2: Individual agents are responsible for defining and monitoring their own services.

🔘 True
🔘 False

✅ Correct: True
❌ Incorrect: False

Q3: Access Control Lists (ACLs) are used to secure access to the UI, API, CLI, service communications, and agent communications.

🔘 True
🔘 False

✅ Correct: True
❌ Incorrect: False

Multiple choice questions

When there is more than one correct answer, the question explicitly states so. For example, "Choose TWO correct answers."

Q4: Which protocol(s) need to be enabled in your network configuration to permit the nodes to communicate over the gossip protocol?

🔘 TCP and UDP
🔘 gRPC
🔘 SSL
🔘 HTTP and HTTPS
🔘 All of the above

✅ Correct: TCP and UDP
❌ Incorrect: gRPC
❌ Incorrect: SSL
❌ Incorrect: HTTP and HTTPS
❌ Incorrect: All of the above

Q5: What are the benefits of using the Consul Enterprise feature of adding read replicas in a redundancy zone to your Consul datacenter? Choose two correct answers.

  • Read-scalability
  • Redundancy
  • Increase quorum
  • Segment your network
  • Disaster recovery

✅ Correct: Read-scalability
✅ Correct: Redundancy
❌ Incorrect: Increase quorum
❌ Incorrect: Segment your network
❌ Incorrect: Disaster recovery

Q6: You can query for services using the following HTTP API call.

$ curl http://localhost:8500/v1/catalog/service/web

The following response is returned:

[
  {
    "ID": "82f64bfa-22c2-5727-0f5d-0bae376f6584",
    "Node": "Judiths-MBP.lan",
    "Address": "127.0.0.1",
    "Datacenter": "dc1",
    "TaggedAddresses": {
      "lan": "127.0.0.1",
      "wan": "127.0.0.1"
    },
    "NodeMeta": {
      "consul-network-segment": ""
    },
    "ServiceKind": "",
    "ServiceID": "web",
    "ServiceName": "web",
    "ServiceTags": ["rails"],
    "ServiceAddress": "",
    "ServiceWeights": {
      "Passing": 1,
      "Warning": 1
    },
    "ServiceMeta": {},
    "ServicePort": 80,
    "ServiceEnableTagOverride": false,
    "ServiceProxyDestination": "",
    "ServiceProxy": {},
    "ServiceConnect": {},
    "CreateIndex": 10,
    "ModifyIndex": 10
  }
]

You want to retrieve a list of healthy instances of the service. Fill in the blank in the following command:

curl http://localhost:8500/v1/health/service/web______

  • ?healthy
  • ?valid-only
  • ?available=true
  • ?passing
  • ?failing=false

❌ Incorrect: ?healthy
❌ Incorrect: ?valid-only
❌ Incorrect: ?available=true
✅ Correct: ?passing
❌ Incorrect: ?failing=false

UI questions

Q7: You notice the following error in the Consul UI. What is being indicated by the error?

🔘 The node hosting the Dashboard service is down.
🔘 The proxy in the service mesh has failed.
🔘 The dashboard service failed to register.
🔘 One or more health checks for the Dashboard service have failed.

❌ Incorrect: The node hosting the Dashboard service is down.
❌ Incorrect: The proxy in the service mesh has failed.
❌ Incorrect: The dashboard service failed to register.
✅ Correct: One or more health checks for the Dashboard service have failed.

Q8: You navigate to the Intentions page in the Consul UI and see the following content. With this configuration, what will be the behavior of web -> api service communication?

🔘 All service to service communication will be denied, including web -> api.
🔘 The web service will be allowed to communicate with the api service.
🔘 Communication from web -> api can not occur until an api -> web rule is created.
🔘 The api service will be able to send traffic to web.

❌ Incorrect: All service to service communication will be denied, including web -> api.
✅ Correct: The web service will be allowed to communicate with the api service.
❌ Incorrect: Communication from web -> api can not occur until an api -> web rule is created.
❌ Incorrect: The api service will be able to send traffic to web.

Next steps

The Review Guide lists a table of exam objectives with its corresponding documentation and the learn tutorial link. Use the table as your check-list to prepare for the exam.

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