A container in an AKS cluster repeatedly restarts.
Pod events show probe failures, although node-level CPU and memory metrics are normal.
You need to diagnose the cause of the repeating restarts.
What should you do first?
Suggested Answer:
D
Explanation:
The first troubleshooting action should be to inspect the pod events and container logs. Microsoft's AKS troubleshooting guidance identifies Kubernetes events and application logs as primary diagnostic sources when a pod repeatedly restarts or enters states such as CrashLoopBackOff. kubectl describe pod exposes events including failed liveness or readiness probes, restart reasons, scheduling problems, and container termination information. kubectl logs provides application-level output, while kubectl logs --previous is particularly useful when the container has already restarted because it retrieves logs from the previous terminated container instance.
The scenario already states that node CPU and memory are normal, making node resource pressure less likely. Probe failures can instead result from incorrect probe paths, ports, timeouts, dependency checks, slow application initialization, or application errors. Microsoft specifically recommends reviewing health probe configuration and application behavior before modifying infrastructure.
Scaling replicas does not identify the root cause. Decreasing initialDelaySeconds can actually make a slow-starting application fail sooner. Draining or rebooting the node is unjustified without evidence of a node-level fault.
Study Guide references: AKS troubleshooting Kubernetes events, container logs, liveness/readiness probes, kubectl describe, kubectl logs --previous.