CKAD

CNCF Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD)

Online resources that will help you prepare for taking the Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) Certification exam.

Disclaimer: This is not likely a comprehensive list as the exam will be a moving target with the fast pace of k8s development - please make a pull request if there something wrong or that should be added, or updated in here.

• CNCF Exam Curriculm repository
• CKAD Candidate Handbook
• CKAD Exam Tips
• FAQs

Before you begin

You need to have a Kubernetes cluster, and the kubectl command-line tool must be configured to communicate with your cluster. If you do not already have a cluster, you can create one by using Minikube, or you can use one of these Kubernetes playgrounds:

• Katacoda
• Play with Kubernetes
• Play with K8S Classroom by Docker, Inc

Note: Both katacoda and PWK are free, you just need Google/GitHub/Docker account login to access.

CKAD Curriculum V1.0

Core Concepts - 13%

• Understand kubernetes API Primitives
• Create and configure basic Pods
  • Pod Overview
  • Pod lifecycle
  • configure Pods and containers

Multi-Container Pods - 10%

• Understand Multi-Container Pod design patterns (e.g: ambassador, adapter, sidecare)

Pod Design - 20%

• Understand how to use Labels, Selectors, and Annotations.
  • Labels & Selectors
    • Using labels effectively
  • NodeSelector
  • Annotations overview
    • kubectl annotate
• Understand Deployments and how to perform rolling updates.
  • deployments
  • rolling updates
• Understand Deployments and how to perform rollbacks.
• Understand Jobs and CronJobs.
  • CronJobs
    • Overview
    • Running automated tasks with CronJob
  • Jobs
    • Overview
    • Parallel processing using Expansions

Configuration - 18%

• Understand ConfigMaps
  • Configure redis using ConfigMap
• Understand SecurityContexts
  • SecurityContext v1 core
  • Tuning Docker with the newest security enhancements
• Define an application's resources requirements
• Create & consume Secrets
• Understand ServiceAccounts

Observability - 18%

• Understand LivenessProbes and ReadinessProbes
  • LivenessProbe
  • ReadinessProbe
• Understand container logging
  • Logging
  • Using StackDrive
• Understand how to monitor applications in Kubernetes
• Understand debugging in Kubernetes
  • Application introspection
  • Services

Services & Networking - 13%

• Understand Services
• Demonstrate basic understanding of NetworkPolicies