Certified Kubernetes Administrator

The Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) exam focuses on assessing your ability to handle the day-to-day responsibilities of a Kubernetes administrator. The CKA curriculum is well-defined by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) and typically includes the following core domains:

Exam Domain

Cluster Architecture, Installation & Configuration (25%)

  • 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

Storage (10%)

  • 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

Services & Networking (20%)

  • 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

Workloads & Scheduling (15%)

  • 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

Troubleshooting (30%)

  • Evaluate cluster and node logging

  • Understand how to monitor applications

  • Manage container stdout & stderr logs

  • Troubleshoot application failure

  • Troubleshoot cluster component failure

  • Troubleshoot networking

Preparation Materials

  • Documentation: The Kubernetes official docs https://kubernetes.io/docs/ are essential for exam preparation.

  • Labs: Hands-on practice with clusters using tools like Minikube, kind, or cloud services (e.g., GKE, AKS, EKS).

  • Mock Exams: Practice scenarios from resources like Killer.sh (provided with CKA exam purchase) or other training platforms.

  • Courses: Platforms like Linux Academy, Udemy, and KodeKloud offer comprehensive courses.

  • Cheat Sheets: Have a curated list of kubectl commands for quick reference (available in official kubernetes documentation).

References

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