CKAD Exam Preparation Study Guide (Certified Kubernetes Application Developer)

Certified Kubernetes Application Developer [CKAD] Exam Study Guide

How to Prepare for the CKAD Exam?

Preparing for the CKAD Certified Kubernetes Application Developer exam? Don’t know where to start? This post is the CKAD Kubernetes developer Certificate 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 CKAD exam. Please share the post within your circles so it helps them to prepare for the exam.

CKAD Kubernetes Certification Exam Voucher

Coupon: Use Code SUMMER25

CKAD Kubernetes Developer Online Course

LinkedIn Learning (Free trial) Kubernetes Dev. Cert. Preparation Exam Tips
Pluralsight Learning Path: Developer Certificate Exam
Whizlabs Kubernetes App Developer Course
Udemy K8s Dev. Exam Preparation by Zeal Vora

Kubernetes App Developer Practice Test/Book

Udemy Practice Tests Kubernetes Application Developer practice test
Amazon e-book (PDF) Kubernetes Application Developer Study Guide

CKAD Kubernetes Developer Learning Materials

Linux Foundation Bootcamp Cloud Engineer Bootcamp [24 weeks]
Coursera Fundamentals of Kubernetes Deployment

Check out all the other DevOps/Kubernetes certificate study guides

Full Disclosure: Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. I receive a commission when you purchase through them.

CKAD [Kubernetes Developer] Syllabus

CKAD Core Concepts – 13%

Understand Kubernetes API primitives

The Kubernetes API

Kubernetes API Primitives

Create and configure basic Pods

An overview of Pods

Using Pods

The Pod Lifecycle

Configure Pod Initialization

Configure Pods and Containers

Multi-container Pods – 10%

Understand Multi-container Pod design patterns (e.g. ambassador, adapter, sidecar)

Detail explanation on Pods

Patterns for Composite Containers

Multi-Container Pod design patterns in Kubernetes

Ambassador pattern

Adapter pattern

Sidecar pattern

Pod Design – 20%

Understand Deployments and how to perform rolling updates

Deployment provides declarative updates for Pods

Performing a Rolling Update

Understand Deployments and how to perform rollbacks

Rolling Back a Deployment

Understand Jobs and CronJobs

A job creates one or more Pods

Understanding CronJobs

Running Automated Tasks with a CronJob

Understand how to use Labels, Selectors, and Annotations

Labels and Selectors

Kubernetes annotations

Setting Labels and Annotations

ckad Kubernetes for developers

Amazon link (affiliate)

State Persistence – 8%

Understand Persistent Volume Claims for storage

Creating a persistent volume claim

Kubernetes volumes

Persistent volumes in Kubernetes

Configure a Pod to use a persistent volume for storage

Configuration – 18%

Understand ConfigMaps

What is ConfigMap?

Configure a Pod to use a ConfigMap

Understand Security Contexts

Configure a security context for a Pod or Container

Security best practices for Kubernetes Deployment

Define an application’s resource requirements

Managing resources for Containers

Assign memory resources to Containers & Pods

Assign CPU resources to Containers & Pods

Create & consume Secrets

Kubernetes Secrets

Distribute credentials securely using Secrets

Understand ServiceAccounts

Managing service accounts

Configure service accounts for Pods

Observability – 18%

Understand LivenessProbes and ReadinessProbes

Configure liveness, readiness & startup probes

When should you use a liveness probe?

Setting up health checks with readiness & liveness probes

Kubernetes’ ConfigMap

Understand container logging

Logging Architecture

Debugging Workloads

Printing logs for a container in a pod or specified resource

Understand how to monitor applications in Kubernetes

Tools for monitoring resources

Kubernetes Monitoring: Best practices, methods & existing solutions

Monitoring application performance in Kubernetes

Understand debugging in Kubernetes

Debug services in Kubernetes

How to debug Pods and ReplicationControllers?

Debug running Pods

Services & Networking – 13%

Understand Services

Services in Kubernetes

Service Topology

Using a service to expose your app

Connecting applications with services

Demonstrate a basic understanding of NetworkPolicies

Network Policies

Declare network policies

Kubernetes network policy recipes

This brings us to the end of the Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) 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 preparing for other DevOps / Kubernetes certification exams, check out the Kubernetes study guides for those exams.

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