Calico Introduction Quiz
Related Document: Calico IntroductionLast Updated: September 12, 2026
Quiz
- In what year was Project Calico originally started?
- A) 2012
- B) 2014
- C) 2016
- D) 2018
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Answer: B) 2014
Explanation: Project Calico's origins are in 2014 at Metaswitch. Tigera was formed in 2016. Do not conflate the project's origin with later product launches or Calico release dates.
- Which company is Calico's primary maintainer and supplies Calico Enterprise and Cloud?
- A) Google
- B) Red Hat
- C) Tigera
- D) VMware
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Answer: C) Tigera
Explanation: Tigera maintains Calico with community contributors and supplies commercial offerings. “Metaswitch founders” is a description of people, not the name of the company being asked for. A CNCF Landscape listing does not mean CNCF governs the project.
- Which statement is NOT true of the default Calico installation?
- A) BGP-based routing
- B) It automatically injects Istio sidecars into every Pod
- C) Kubernetes standard and extended network policies
- D) Support for eBPF dataplane
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Answer: B) It automatically injects Istio sidecars into every Pod
Explanation: Calico provides networking, policy and selectable data planes. Mesh integrations are separate capabilities/configuration, not automatic injection of Istio sidecars by this lab's installation. Cilium mesh functions also require their own configuration; a CNI comparison should not imply that every mesh feature is enabled by default.
- What can an unencapsulated Calico topology with correctly configured BGP and underlay routes provide?
- A) Simpler configuration
- B) Better security encryption
- C) Routing without overlay encapsulation headers, where the underlay supports Pod routes
- D) Built-in DNS resolution
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Answer: C) Routing without overlay encapsulation headers, where the underlay supports Pod routes
Explanation: BGP distributes routes. If the underlay can route Pod addresses and encapsulation is disabled, packets need no IPIP/VXLAN wrapper. BGP can also coexist with IPIP, so enabling BGP alone does not remove encapsulation. It neither encrypts traffic nor guarantees lower latency for every workload.
- Across which environments can the appropriate Calico configurations and product editions be used?
- A) Cloud only
- B) On-premises only
- C) Cloud, on-premises, and hybrid
- D) Kubernetes only, no VM support
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Answer: C) Cloud, on-premises, and hybrid
Explanation: Calico has cloud, on-premises and hybrid use cases, but platform/kernel/data-plane and edition limitations still apply. GKE Dataplane V2 specifically uses Cilium rather than Calico. VM and Windows capabilities are not identical to Linux Kubernetes capabilities.
- Which list includes supported Calico Linux data-plane choices?
- A) iptables only
- B) eBPF only
- C) iptables, nftables and eBPF
- D) IPVS only
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Answer: C) iptables, nftables and eBPF
Explanation: Calico supports these Linux data-plane choices. Encapsulation modes such as VXLAN/IPIP are a different choice, and IPVS is a kube-proxy backend rather than a complete Calico data plane. Select using kernel, platform and feature requirements; the lab explicitly uses iptables.
- What is calicoctl?
- A) A graphical user interface for Calico
- B) A command-line tool for managing Calico resources
- C) A Kubernetes operator for Calico
- D) A monitoring dashboard
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Answer: B) A command-line tool for managing Calico resources
Explanation: calicoctl manages Calico resources and offers diagnostics such as IPAM/BGP operations. Use a matching client version. Many routine resource operations can instead use kubectl with the Calico API server. calicoctl node status requires an appropriate node environment; a laptop kubeconfig alone is insufficient.
- What is the relationship between Calico OSS and Calico Enterprise?
- A) They are completely separate products with no shared code
- B) Calico Enterprise is the commercial version built on top of Calico OSS
- C) Calico OSS is deprecated in favor of Calico Enterprise
- D) Calico Enterprise only works with Calico Cloud
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Answer: B) Calico Enterprise is the commercial version built on top of Calico OSS
Explanation: Enterprise builds on Calico technology with commercial features and support. Open Source also includes policy tiers and Goldmane/Whisker observability and can run in production. Consult the current feature matrix rather than assuming every advanced feature is paid or that OSS is only for small clusters.
- Which year did Calico introduce eBPF dataplane support?
- A) 2018
- B) 2019
- C) 2020
- D) 2022
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Answer: C) 2020
Explanation: The official February 25, 2020 announcement introduced the new data plane as a tech preview for Calico 3.13. It was not a GA announcement. eBPF executes in the Linux kernel and can replace parts of conventional packet processing, not the kernel itself. Performance depends on the measured workload.
- What is Calico Cloud?
- A) A managed Kubernetes service
- B) A SaaS platform for Calico network security
- C) A cloud storage solution
- D) A CDN service for Kubernetes
Show Answer
Answer: B) A SaaS platform for Calico network security
Explanation: Calico Cloud is Tigera's SaaS offering for network security and observability. It is not a Kubernetes hosting service, object store or CDN. Features and responsibilities differ from self-managed Enterprise; cluster integration/configuration is still required. The earlier unsupported 2022 launch date is unnecessary to this definition.