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Instrumentation and Exporters Questions

Practice questions for Instrumentation and Exporters topic in Prometheus Certified Associate. 32 questions covering this domain.

32 questions10 easy14 medium8 hard
Q1
hard

A custom exporter collector updates global metric objects in place on every scrape. Why is that discouraged for non-trivial collectors?

Q2
easy

A developer wants to expose how long it has been since the last successful sync. What is the recommended Prometheus approach?

Q3
medium

A team proposes adding a `user_id` label to a high-volume request metric so every user's traffic can be queried directly. What is the Prometheus guida...

Q4
medium

A service-level batch job runs nightly and then exits. Which metric is the key one to expose, and how should it usually be delivered?

Q5
hard

An exporter can see application metrics plus machine CPU, memory, and filesystem metrics from the host. What should it normally do with the machine me...

Q6
easy

A metric tracks the number of requests currently in progress and can move up or down during the day. Which Prometheus metric type fits best?

Q7
medium

A batch job regularly runs for more than a few minutes and sometimes becomes slow when calling external systems. What additional monitoring approach i...

Q8
medium

An exporter polls its target every 10 seconds on its own timer and caches the results for Prometheus to scrape later. What does the guidance say?

Q9
hard

Which statement correctly describes Prometheus's default metrics collection model?

Q10
easy

In Prometheus terminology, a "scrape target" is:

Q11
medium

When should you prefer a Summary over a Histogram for measuring request latency?

Q12
easy

What HTTP content type does a standard Prometheus metrics endpoint expose by default?

Q13
easy

The Prometheus Node Exporter is primarily used to:

Q14
easy

Which metric name suffix follows Prometheus naming conventions for a counter that tracks total HTTP requests?

Q15
medium

The Prometheus Blackbox Exporter is used to:

Q16
hard

Why is it harmful to use a `user_id` label with millions of distinct values in Prometheus?

Q17
hard

A short-lived service-level batch job finishes before Prometheus can scrape it directly. What pattern do the docs recommend?

Q18
medium

Why should instrumentation avoid labels such as `user_id` when they can grow very large?

Q19
medium

An application currently exposes `http_responses_200_total` and `http_responses_500_total` as separate metric names. What redesign matches Prometheus ...

Q20
easy

Which Prometheus metric type is appropriate for a cumulative total such as all processed requests since process start?

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