Apache Airflow Certification Practice Test 11

Root Cause Analysis Questions

Question 1 of 20

📋 Multiple Choice

Question 201

A daily retail sales DAG usually finishes in 20 minutes. Today it is still running after 2 hours. Investigation shows: - Scheduler healthy - Workers healthy - One source database query running for 90 minutes What is the MOST likely root cause?

A. Pool configuration

✓

B. Slow source query

C. DAG naming issue

D. XCom limitation

Answer

✅ B. Slow source query

Answered: 0 / 20

Apache Airflow Certification Practice Test 11

Root Cause Analysis Questions

Insightful Saga — Modern Data Engineering Certification Preparation

Question 201

A. Pool configuration

B. Slow source query

C. DAG naming issue

D. XCom limitation

Answer: ✅ B. Slow source query

Question 202

A banking workflow never starts. The DAG exists and appears in the Airflow UI. No DAG runs are being created. What is the MOST likely root cause?

A. Connection corruption

B. DAG is paused

C. Pool exhaustion

D. XCom issue

Answer: ✅ B. DAG is paused

Question 203

A healthcare DAG remains in "Queued" status for one hour. No tasks are running. Workers are fully utilized. What is the MOST likely root cause?

A. Worker capacity exhaustion

B. Variable issue

C. DAG tagging issue

D. Trigger rule issue

Answer: ✅ A. Worker capacity exhaustion

Question 204

A workflow processes customer data. The DAG succeeds, but the target table contains zero records. What is the MOST likely root cause category?

A. UI problem

B. Worker crash

C. Business logic issue

D. Scheduler failure

Answer: ✅ C. Business logic issue

Question 205

A source API was unavailable for ten minutes. The workflow failed immediately without attempting another call. What is the MOST likely cause?

A. Connection pool issue

B. Worker shortage

C. Missing retry configuration

D. Scheduler failure

Answer: ✅ C. Missing retry configuration

Question 206

A company reports duplicate reporting records. Investigation shows the same DAG execution date was triggered twice. What is the MOST likely root cause?

A. Alerting issue

B. Pool overflow

C. Duplicate DAG execution

D. Variable corruption

Answer: ✅ C. Duplicate DAG execution

Question 207

A Sensor has been running for six hours. The downstream workflow has not started. The required file is not present. What is the MOST likely root cause?

A. Scheduler failure

B. Trigger rule misconfiguration

C. Waiting condition not satisfied

D. Worker crash

Answer: ✅ C. Waiting condition not satisfied

Question 208

A finance workflow suddenly begins failing after a source-system release. Task logs show missing columns. What is the MOST likely root cause?

A. Source schema change

B. Queue configuration

C. Pool issue

D. DAG pause

Answer: ✅ A. Source schema change

Question 209

A support engineer observes thousands of queued tasks. Scheduler is functioning correctly. What is the MOST likely area to investigate?

A. Variable values

B. Task tags

C. XCom size

D. Worker availability

Answer: ✅ D. Worker availability

Question 210

A company misses all workflow executions for one specific day. Investigation shows the Scheduler was unavailable during that period. What is the MOST likely root cause?

A. Hook failure

B. Scheduler outage

C. Pool exhaustion

D. Connection issue

Answer: ✅ B. Scheduler outage

Question 211

A healthcare workflow fails intermittently. The same code sometimes succeeds. Logs show temporary DNS resolution errors. What is the MOST likely root cause?

A. XCom configuration

B. DAG structure issue

C. Infrastructure instability

D. Variable mismatch

Answer: ✅ C. Infrastructure instability

Question 212

A support engineer receives an SLA breach alert. All tasks succeeded successfully. What is the MOST likely explanation?

A. Workflow exceeded expected runtime

B. Connection issue

C. Worker failed

D. Scheduler crashed

Answer: ✅ A. Workflow exceeded expected runtime

Question 213

A DAG runs correctly in Dev but fails in Production. The code is identical. What is the MOST likely area to investigate first?

A. Environment configuration differences

B. Task Group structure

C. DAG filename

D. Alert settings

Answer: ✅ A. Environment configuration differences

Question 214

A company receives hundreds of file-processing failures simultaneously. Investigation reveals cloud storage permissions changed overnight. What is the MOST likely root cause category?

A. Scheduler issue

B. DAG corruption

C. Pool exhaustion

D. Access control issue

Answer: ✅ D. Access control issue

Question 215

A banking DAG executes successfully. However, no customer notifications are delivered. What is the MOST likely component to investigate?

A. Pool

B. Notification task

C. Connection metadata

D. Scheduler

Answer: ✅ B. Notification task

Question 216

A workflow suddenly begins creating historical runs covering two months of missing schedules. What is the MOST likely cause?

A. DAG tags

B. Worker restart

C. Pool limitation

D. Catchup behavior

Answer: ✅ D. Catchup behavior

Question 217

A manufacturing workflow frequently waits on external systems. Runtime is highly inconsistent. What is the MOST likely root cause category?

A. Variable configuration

B. External dependency variability

C. Task Group structure

D. Trigger rule issue

Answer: ✅ B. External dependency variability

Question 218

Business users report failures before engineers are aware of them. What is the MOST likely operational gap?

A. Variable management

B. Pool shortage

C. Insufficient monitoring and alerting

D. XCom issue

Answer: ✅ C. Insufficient monitoring and alerting

Question 219

An Airflow environment consumes significantly more infrastructure resources than expected. Most workers remain idle throughout the day. What is the MOST likely cause?

A. Overprovisioned infrastructure

B. Missing Variables

C. Trigger rule misuse

D. DAG naming issue

Answer: ✅ A. Overprovisioned infrastructure

Question 220

An enterprise Airflow platform experiences recurring incidents caused by different teams implementing workflows in different ways. What is the MOST likely root cause?

A. Queue management

B. Sensor configuration

C. Lack of engineering standards and governance

D. Worker shortage

Answer: ✅ C. Lack of engineering standards and governance

Explanation:

Enterprise-scale Airflow environments require standardization, governance, reusable patterns, and operational controls to reduce inconsistency and operational risk.