Preparing for the CKA Certified Kubernetes Administrator exam? Don't know where to start? This post is the CKA Kubernetes Administrator Certification Exam Preparation Study Guide (with links to each exam objective).
I have curated a list of articles from the Kubernetes documentation and other blogs on the web for each objective of the CKA Certification exam. Please share the post within your circles so it helps them to prepare for the exam.
CKA Kubernetes Administrator Exam Coupon
| CKA Certification Voucher | CKA Certification Exam Voucher [30% OFF] |
CKA Kubernetes Administrator Course (Online)
| Pluralsight | CKA Certificate Exam Learning Path [Free Trial] |
| Whizlabs | Certified Kubernetes Administrator Course |
| Udemy | CKA Preparation by Zeal Vora |
CKA Kubernetes Administrator Materials
| Linux Foundation (Live Training) | Kubernetes for Administrators |
| LinkedIn Learning [Free Trial] | Learning Kubernetes for Beginners |
| Educative | A Practical guide to Kubernetes |
| Coursera | Fundamentals of Kubernetes Deployment |
CKA Kubernetes Administrator E-book (PDF)
| Amazon | A Hands-on Guide to CKA exam for Administrators |
| Kubectl Cheat Sheet | An Overview of all Kubectl commands |
To view other DevOps certificate study guides, click here.
Full Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. I receive a commission when you purchase through them.
CKA Curriculum Topics
Scheduling – 5%
Use label selectors to schedule Pods
https://kubernetes.io/docs/configuration/assign-pod-node/
https://bigbinary.com/scheduling-pods-on-nodes-in-kubernetes-using-labels
Understand the role of DaemonSets
https://kubernetes.io/docs/workloads-controllers/daemonset/
Understand how resource limits can affect Pod scheduling
https://kskilling.com/understand-how-resource-limits-can-affect-pod-scheduling/
Understand how to run multiple schedulers and how to configure Pods to use them
https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/administer-cluster/configure-multiple-schedulers/
https://kubernetes.io/blog/advanced-scheduling-kubernetes/
Manually schedule a pod without a scheduler
https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/configure-pod-container/static-pod/
Display scheduler events
https://kskilling.com/display-scheduler-events/
Know how to configure the Kubernetes scheduler
https://kubernetes.io/docs/administer-cluster/configure-multiple-schedulers/
Logging/Monitoring – 5%
Understand how to monitor all cluster components
https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/debug-application-cluster/resource-usage-monitoring/
https://www.datadoghq.com/blog/monitoring-kubernetes-era/
Understand how to monitor applications
https://kskilling.com/understand-how-to-monitor-applications/
Manage cluster component logs
https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/debug-application-cluster/debug-cluster/#looking-at-logs
Manage application logs
Application Lifecycle Management – 8%
Understand deployments and how to perform rolling update and rollbacks
https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/workloads-controllers/deployment/
https://kubernetes.io/docs/tutorials/kubernetes-basics/update/update-intro/
https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/controllers-deployment/#rolling-back-a-deployment
Know various ways to configure applications
https://kubernetes.io/docs/configuration
Know how to scale applications
https://kubernetes.io/docs/tutorials/kubernetes-basics/scale/scale-intro/
Understand the primitives necessary to create a self-healing application
https://jaxenter.com/kubernetes-self-healing-nodes
https://multinode-kubernetes-cluster.readthedocs.io/en/latest/k8s-selfhealing
Cluster Maintenance – 11%
Understand Kubernetes cluster upgrade process
https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/administer-cluster/kubeadm/kubeadm-upgrade/
https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/setup-tools/kubeadm/kubeadm-upgrade/
https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/administer-cluster/cluster-management/#upgrading-a-cluster
Facilitate operating system upgrades
https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/administer-cluster/safely-drain-node/
Implement backup and restore methodologies
Security – 12%
Know how to configure authentication and authorization
https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/access-authn-authz/authentication/
https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/access-authn-authz/rbac/
https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/access-authn-authz/rbac/
Understand Kubernetes security primitives
https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/security/
https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/policy/pod-security-policy/
Know how to configure network policies
https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/services-networking/network-policies/
https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/administer-cluster/declare-network-policy/
Amazon link (affiliate)
Create and manage TLS certificates for cluster components
https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/tls/managing-tls-in-a-cluster/
Work with images securely
https://kubernetes.io/docs/container-images/#using-a-private-registry
https://kubernetes.io/docs/containers-images/#specifying-imagepullsecrets-on-a-pod
Define security contexts
https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/configure-pod-container/security-context/
Secure persistent key-value store
https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/administer-cluster/configure-upgrade-etcd/#securing-etcd-clusters
Storage – 7%
Understand persistent volumes and know how to create them
https://kubernetes.io/storage/persistent-volumes/
Understand access modes for volumes
https://kubernetes.io/storage/persistent-volumes/#access-modes
Understand persistent volume claims primitive
https://kubernetes.io/docs/persistent-volumes/#persistentvolumeclaims
Understand Kubernetes storage objects
https://kubernetes.io/docs/volumes/#types-of-volumes
https://kubernetes.io/docs/persistent-volumes/#storage-object-in-use-protection
Know how to configure applications with persistent storage
https://kubernetes.io/docs/configure-pod-container/configure-persistent-volume-storage/
Troubleshooting – 10%
Troubleshoot application failure
https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/debug-application-cluster/debug-application/
https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/debug-application-cluster/debug-application-introspection/
Troubleshoot control plane failure
https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/debug-application-cluster/debug-cluster/
Troubleshoot worker node failure
https://rx-m.com/online-training-module-5/
Troubleshoot networking
https://gravitational.com/blog/troubleshooting-kubernetes-networking/
Core Concepts – 19%
Understand the Kubernetes API primitives
https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts-overview/kubernetes-api/
https://kubernetes.io/docs-generated/kubernetes-api/v1.11/
Understand the Kubernetes cluster architecture
https://kubernetes.io/concepts/architecture
https://kubernetes.io/concepts/components
https://cloud.google.com/kubernetes-engine/docs/concepts/cluster-architecture
Understand Services and other network primitives
https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/services-networking/service/
Networking – 11%
Understand the networking configuration on the cluster nodes
https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/cluster-administration/networking/
Understand Pod networking concepts
https://medium.com/google-cloud/understanding-kubernetes-networking-pods
https://github.com/kubernetes/design-proposals/network/networking
Understand Service Networking
https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/services-networking/service/
Deploy and configure a network load balancer
https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/access-application-cluster/create-external-load-balancer/
https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/services-networking/#loadbalancer
Amazon link (affiliate)
Know how to use Ingress rules
https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/services-networking/ingress/
https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/services-networking/ingress-controllers/
https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/access-application-cluster/ingress-minikube/
Know how to configure and use the cluster DNS
https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/access-application-cluster/configure-dns-cluster/
Understand CNI
https://github.com/containernetworking/cni
https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/extend-kubernetes/compute-storage-net/network-plugins/#cni
https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/cluster-administration/networking/#aws-vpc-cni-for-kubernetes
Installation, Configuration & Validation – 12%
Design a Kubernetes Cluster
https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/cluster-administration/cluster-administration-overview/
https://medium.com/hashmapinc/tips-for-designing-a-kubernetes-cluster
Install Kubernetes Masters and Nodes
https://kubernetes.io/docs/setup/production-environment/tools/kubeadm/install-kubeadm/
https://kubernetes.io/docs/setup/production-environment/tools/kubeadm/create-cluster-kubeadm/
Configure secure cluster communications
https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/tls/managing-tls-in-a-cluster/
https://kubernetes.io/docs/setup/best-practices/certificates/
Configure a highly-available Kubernetes cluster
https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/administer-cluster/highly-available-master/
https://kubernetes.io/docs/setup/production-environment/tools/kubeadm/ha-topology/
https://kubernetes.io/docs/setup/production-environment/tools/kubeadm/high-availability/
Know where to get the Kubernetes release binaries
https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/tools/install-kubectl/
Provision underlying infrastructure to deploy a Kubernetes cluster
Provision a GCP infrastructure
Provision and deploy applications to Azure Kubernetes Service
Choose a network solution
https://www.objectif-libre.com/en/blog/k8s-network-solutions-comparison/
Choose your Kubernetes infrastructure configuration
https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/aks/kubernetes-walkthrough-portal
https://github.com/kubernetes-the-hard-way/blob/docs/infrastructure-gcp
Run end-to-end tests on your cluster
https://kubernetes.io/blog/kubernetes-end-to-end-testing-for-everyone/
https://github.com/kubernetes/blob/sig-testing/e2e-tests#building-kubernetes-and-running-the-tests
https://k8smeetup.github.io/docs/getting-started-guides/validation/#end-to-end-testing
https://jaxenter.com/end-to-end-tests-in-kubernetes
Analyze end-to-end test results
https://k8smeetup.github.io/docs/getting-started-guides/validation/#evaluating-end-to-end-results
https://github.com/kubernetes/sig-testing/e2e-tests#performance-evaluation
Run Node end-to-end Tests
https://kubernetes.io/docs/setup/best-practices/node-conformance/
Install and use kubeadm to install, configure, and manage Kubernetes clusters
https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/setup-tools/kubeadm/kubeadm/
This brings us to the end of Kubernetes Certified Administrator (CKA) Exam Preparation Study Guide
What do you think? Let me know in the comments section if I have missed out on anything. Also, I love to hear from you about how your preparation is going on!
In case you are looking for other DevOps / Kubernetes certification exams check out this page
Follow/Like ravikirans.com to receive updates
Sign up for Newsletter
Want to be notified as soon as I post? Subscribe to RSS feed / leave your email address in the subscribe section. Share the article to your social networks with the below links so it can benefit others.
