PLEASE NOTE: The changes to the Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA exam) will be released on Tuesday, February 18, 2025 00:00 UTC. Any exams taken on or after that date will reflect the changes previously communicated.
These updates are part of our ongoing efforts to ensure that a Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) has the most updated skills, knowledge, and competence needed in the industry.
What is changing on CKA?
- The CKA domains (i.e. Storage, Troubleshooting, etc.) will remain unchanged but please review the upcoming changes to competencies (some additions/deletions and updated language which are outlined below each domain heading).
- Any CKA exam taken after the updated release will test on the new set of Domains and Competencies (see below for updates).
NOTE: It does NOT matter if the exam reservation happens to be for a first attempt or a retake, nor does it matter on what date you completed the exam purchase. The only date that matters is the date you sit for the exam.
A Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) will be able to:
- Demonstrate their ability to do basic installation as well as configuring and managing production-grade Kubernetes clusters.
- Understand key concepts such as Kubernetes networking, storage, security, maintenance, logging and monitoring, application lifecycle, troubleshooting, API object primitives.
- Ability to establish basic use-cases for end users.
Storage – 10%
- Implement storage classes and dynamic volume provisioning
- Configure volume types, access modes and reclaim policies
- Manage persistent volumes and persistent volume claims
Troubleshooting – 30%
- Troubleshoot clusters and nodes
- Troubleshoot cluster components
- Monitor cluster and application resource usage
- Manage and evaluate container output streams
- Troubleshoot services and networking
Workloads and Scheduling – 15%
- Understand application deployments and how to perform rolling update and rollbacks
- Use ConfigMaps and Secrets to configure applications
- Configure workload autoscaling
- Understand the primitives used to create robust, self-healing, application deployments
- Configure Pod admission and scheduling (limits, node affinity, etc.)
Cluster Architecture, Installation and Configuration – 25%
- Manage role based access control (RBAC)
- Prepare underlying infrastructure for installing a Kubernetes cluster
- Create and manage Kubernetes clusters using kubeadm
- Manage the lifecycle of Kubernetes clusters
- Implement and configure a highly-available control plane
- Use Helm and Kustomize to install cluster components
- Understand extension interfaces (CNI, CSI, CRI, etc.)
- Understand CRDs, install and configure operators
Servicing and Networking – 20%
- Understand connectivity between Pods
- Define and enforce Network Policies
- Use ClusterIP, NodePort, LoadBalancer service types and endpoints
- Use the Gateway API to manage Ingress traffic
- Know how to use Ingress controllers and Ingress resources
- Understand and use CoreDNS