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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​