Free Practice Quiz Question List

2 Monitoring and Alerting Online Quiz Questions

Use this free practice quiz with 20 questions to review 2 Monitoring and Alerting, test your knowledge, and prepare for your next test or exam.

20 questions

True or false

1 point

True or false: A monitoring system is effective if it displays service health on a dashboard, even when no one is watching and no alerts are configured for urgent problems.

A
True
B
False

Choose one

1 point

A team wants to detect when its public service is unavailable and also determine whether the database, application, or network caused the problem. Which monitoring design best supports both goals?

A
Black-box checks reveal internal database causes, while white-box checks test the public service as a user experiences it.
B
Black-box checks test the service as a user experiences it, while white-box monitoring helps investigate internal components.
C
Black-box monitoring measures only capacity, while white-box monitoring measures only user-visible errors.
D
Black-box and white-box monitoring are interchangeable names for dashboard displays.

Fill in the blank

1 point

Logs are records of events.

Written response

1 point

Which of the four golden signals describes how close a system is to its capacity?

Choose all

1 point

Select all correct statements about these telemetry signals.

A
Metrics are numerical measurements over time, such as request rate or duration.
B
Logs show the path a request takes across services.
C
Traces show a request's path across services and can help locate time or errors.
D
Metrics are timestamped records of individual events with severity and request identifiers.

Choose one

1 point

A checkout service has brief CPU spikes, but its user-facing behavior remains normal. At another time, checkout errors stay above a meaningful service threshold. Which condition is the better candidate for a page?

A
Page whenever any server briefly reports high CPU, regardless of service impact.
B
Page for every change in a dashboard metric so responders can investigate immediately.
C
Page when checkout errors or latency stay above a meaningful service threshold long enough to indicate sustained user impact.
D
Create a page for any condition, even if no recipient has a clear response.

True or false

1 point

True or false: Requiring a condition to persist for a suitable evaluation window can reduce notifications caused by brief metric blips.

A
True
B
False

Fill in the blank

1 point

An alert is a notification that requires a person to .

Written response

1 point

What one-word work-tracking item can receive important but non-urgent work instead of paging?

Choose all

1 point

Select all actions that can reduce duplicate alert noise without requiring the team to ignore useful incident signals.

A
Group related alerts from one incident into a concise message.
B
Page for every repeated notification so no alert is missed.
C
Silence all alerts indefinitely whenever one incident begins.
D
Deduplicate repeated notifications while retaining the signal responders need.

Choose one

1 point

A service's average response time looks acceptable, but some users report slow requests. Which measurement choice is most likely to help the team assess those experiences?

A
Track only average response time, because it shows the experience of every user.
B
Track latency percentiles, because an average can hide slow experiences for some users.
C
Replace response-time measurements with the number of dashboard panels.
D
Track only the fastest response time, because it indicates whether the service is healthy.

Open ended

1 point

A team is redesigning a service dashboard after responders struggled to investigate a rise in errors. What information should the dashboard present to support diagnosis, and why should it not be treated as a replacement for urgent alerts?

Choose one

1 point

A service dashboard appears healthy, but responders discover that notifications have not been reaching them. What monitoring practice would best detect this gap?

A
Monitor only the application because a functioning dashboard proves alert delivery works.
B
Check whether individual monitoring components are running, but do not test notification delivery.
C
Check end-to-end alert delivery so failures in collection or notification routing are detected.
D
Disable monitoring checks during normal service operation to avoid alert noise.

True or false

1 point

Effective monitoring should detect problems without depending on a person continuously watching a dashboard.

A
True
B
False

Written response

1 point

Which golden signal describes the rate of requests reaching a service?

Written response

1 point

When investigating a slow request that crosses several services, which telemetry signal can show where time or errors arise along its path?

Choose one

1 point

What should monitoring alerts primarily target?

A
User-impacting service symptoms
B
Any isolated component anomaly, regardless of user impact or imminent failure
C
Every change shown on a dashboard
D
Routine internal measurements that do not indicate user impact or imminent failure

Choose one

1 point

A service team wants logs that are searchable and can be correlated with other telemetry without exposing unnecessary sensitive data. Which logging approach best meets that goal?

A
Log every available request detail, including secrets, so no investigative information is lost.
B
Use free-form messages with inconsistent fields because they provide more flexibility.
C
Use consistent structured fields, such as severity and a request or trace identifier, and avoid secrets.
D
Record only event descriptions; timestamps and identifiers are unnecessary when metrics are available.

Choose one

1 point

When silencing an alert for a known maintenance condition, which practice is recommended?

A
Silence it for a defined period and record a reason and owner
B
Silence it indefinitely so it cannot interrupt responders
C
Silence it without recording who requested it or why
D
Silence all alerts from the service during maintenance without a time limit

Choose one

1 point

Responders use a dashboard to understand service health and investigate a rise in user-facing failures. What should the team do about urgent conditions?

A
Use the dashboard to support observation and diagnosis, and configure alerts for urgent conditions.
B
Rely on the dashboard alone, since responders can notice urgent conditions while reviewing it.
C
Replace the dashboard with alerts, because dashboards cannot help investigate causes.
D
Show only internal component measurements, since user-facing symptoms are unsuitable for diagnosis.