Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)
CKA Certification is for Kubernetes administrators, cloud administrators and other IT professionals who manage Kubernetes instances.
CKA was created by The Linux Foundation and the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) as a part of their ongoing effort to help develop the Kubernetes ecosystem. The exam is an online, proctored, performance-based test that requires solving multiple tasks from a command line running Kubernetes.
A certified K8s administrator has demonstrated the ability to do basic installation as well as configuring and managing production-grade Kubernetes clusters. They will have an understanding of key concepts such as Kubernetes networking, storage, security, maintenance, logging and monitoring, application lifecycle, troubleshooting, API object primitives and the ability to establish basic use-cases for end users.
Exam Details & Resources
This exam is an online, proctored, performance-based test that requires solving multiple tasks from a command line running Kubernetes.
Candidates have 2 hours to complete the tasks.
Candidates who register for the Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) exam will have 2 attempts (per exam registration) to an exam simulator, provided by Killer.sh.
The exam is based on Kubernetes v1.29
The CKA exam environment will be aligned with the most recent K8s minor version within approximately 4 to 8 weeks of the K8s release date
All Courses Idea
Domains & Competencies
Storage
- Understand storage classes, persistent volumes
- Understand volume mode, access modes and reclaim policies for volumes
- Understand persistent volume claims primitive
- Know how to configure applications with persistent storage
Troubleshooting
- Evaluate cluster and node logging
- Understand how to monitor applications
- Manage container stdout & stderr logs
- Troubleshoot application failure
- Troubleshoot cluster component failure
- Troubleshoot networking
Workloads & Scheduling
- Understand deployments and how to perform rolling update and rollbacks
- Use ConfigMaps and Secrets to configure applications
- Know how to scale applications
- Understand the primitives used to create robust, self-healing, application deployments
- Understand how resource limits can affect Pod scheduling
- Awareness of manifest management and common templating tools
Cluster Architecture, Installation & Configuration
- Manage role based access control (RBAC)
- Use Kubeadm to install a basic cluster
- Manage a highly-available Kubernetes cluster
- Provision underlying infrastructure to deploy a Kubernetes cluster
- Perform a version upgrade on a Kubernetes cluster using Kubeadm
- Implement etcd backup and restore
Services & Networking
- Understand host networking configuration on the cluster nodes
- Understand connectivity between Pods
- Understand ClusterIP, NodePort, LoadBalancer service types and endpoints
- Know how to use Ingress controllers and Ingress resources
- Know how to configure and use CoreDNS
- Choose an appropriate container network interface plugin
You should have a good understanding of Linux, basic networking, and cloud computing concepts.
The Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) certification is designed to ensure that certification holders have the skills, knowledge, and competency to perform the responsibilities of Kubernetes Administrators. The CKA certification allows certified administrators to quickly establish their credibility and value in the job market, and also allowing companies to more quickly hire high-quality teams to support their growth.
Candidates are allowed 2 hours to complete the CKA Exam.
For the CKA Exam, a score of 66% or above must be earned to pass.
Candidates have the option to retake and pass the exam to renew their certification. Certification Renewal must be completed prior to the certification expiration date. The CKA renewed certification will be valid for a further 3 years effective from the date the exam is passed.
