COA Study Guide 2026
Everything you need to pass the COA exam in one place: the exam format, every topic to study, real practice questions with explanations, flashcards, and full-length practice tests. Free, no sign-up needed.
📋 COA Exam Format at a Glance
📚 COA Topics to Study (69)
✍️ Sample COA Questions & Answers
1. Which OpenStack project provides DNS as a service with support for highly available DNS backends?
Designate is OpenStack's DNS-as-a-Service project that integrates with DNS backends like BIND and PowerDNS to provide zone and record management.
2. Which Heat resource type would you use to create a set of identically configured Nova instances that can scale horizontally?
OS::Heat::AutoScalingGroup manages a collection of identical resources and integrates with Ceilometer/Aodh alarms for automatic scaling actions.
3. What is the 'OS::Heat::WaitCondition' resource used for in Heat templates?
OS::Heat::WaitCondition allows Heat to pause and wait for a signal (via a callback URL) from an instance, typically used to confirm that application bootstrapping has completed.
4. Why should automation scripts include version control?
Version control tracks all changes, enables quick rollbacks if issues arise, and supports collaborative development with full change history.
5. What is a 'nested stack' in Heat orchestration?
Nested stacks allow a template to reference another template as a resource type, enabling modular, reusable infrastructure components.
6. When designing an OpenStack deployment for maximum resiliency, which of the following best describes the purpose of using multiple availability zones?
Availability zones isolate failure domains — a power outage or hardware failure in one zone should not impact instances running in another zone.