Certification > Cloud & Containers > Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD)

CERTIFICATION

The Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) exam certifies that candidates can design, build and deploy cloud-native applications for Kubernetes.

Who Is It For

This certification is for Kubernetes engineers, cloud engineers and other IT professionals responsible for building, deploying, and configuring cloud native applications with Kubernetes.

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About This Certification

CKAD has been developed by The Linux Foundation and the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), to help expand the Kubernetes ecosystem through standardized training and certification. This exam is an online, proctored, performance-based test that consists of a set of performance-based tasks (problems) to be solved in a command line.

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What It Demonstrates

The Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) can design, build and deploy cloud-native applications for Kubernetes.
A CKAD can define application resources and use Kubernetes core primitives to create/migrate, configure, expose and observe scalable applications.
The exam assumes working knowledge of container runtimes and microservice architecture.

The successful candidate will be comfortable:
– working with (OCI-compliant) container images
– applying Cloud Native application concepts and architectures
– working with and validating Kubernetes resource definitions

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Domains & Competencies

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Application Design and Build20%

Define, build and modify container images
Choose and use the right workload resource (Deployment, DaemonSet, CronJob, etc.)
Understand multi-container Pod design patterns (e.g. sidecar, init and others)
Utilize persistent and ephemeral volumes

Application Deployment20%

Use Kubernetes primitives to implement common deployment strategies (e.g. blue/green or canary)
Understand Deployments and how to perform rolling updates
Use the Helm package manager to deploy existing packages
Kustomize

Application Observability and Maintenance15%

Understand API deprecations
Implement probes and health checks
Use built-in CLI tools to monitor Kubernetes applications
Utilize container logs
Debugging in Kubernetes

Application Environment, Configuration and Security25%

Discover and use resources that extend Kubernetes (CRD, Operators)
Understand authentication, authorization and admission control
Understand requests, limits, quotas
Understand ConfigMaps
Define resource requirements
Create & consume Secrets
Understand ServiceAccounts
Understand Application Security (SecurityContexts, Capabilities, etc.)

Services and Networking20%

Demonstrate basic understanding of NetworkPolicies
Provide and troubleshoot access to applications via services
Use Ingress rules to expose applications

The CKAD Certification focuses on the skills required to be a successful Kubernetes Application Developer in industry today. The exam assumes working knowledge of container runtimes and microservice architecture.

Exam Details & Resources

This exam is an online, proctored, performance-based test that consists of a set of performance-based tasks (problems) to be solved in a command line. Candidates have 2 hours to complete the tasks.

Candidates who register for the Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) exam will have 2 attempts (per exam registration) to an exam simulator, provided by Killer.sh.

The exam is based on Kubernetes v1.27.
The CKAD exam environment will be aligned with the most recent K8s minor version within approximately 4 to 8 weeks of the K8s release date

Prerequisites

There are no pre-requisites for this exam.

Learning Path

Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD)

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