Me

• Alex Wise
• DevOps Engineer at Flexential Professional Svcs (Applied Trust)
• SFS Captain

Well, you have a couple options...

• Part of the Linux Foundation
• Operational Control handed over from Google August 2018
• Incubate and Manage a ton of projects (Prometheus, Jaeger, fluentd...)
• Exams are very similar format to the LFCS & LFCE
• LF virtual training generally terrible

What The Exams Have In Common:

• $300 for exam and one retake (look for sales)
• Must renew after 2 years
• Online Proctor through PSI
• Updates Quarterly (for new k8s version) w/ new curriculum
• Time restricted

The CKA:

The purpose of the Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) program is to provide assurance that CKAs have the skills, knowledge, and competency to perform the responsibilities of Kubernetes administrators.

• Bootstrapping a multimaster cluster from bare VMs, as well as configuration and troubleshooting
• 3 hour duration
• Employing at least 3 holders of an active CKA qualifies you to be a Certified Kubernetes Service Partner, and is a pipeline for sales

The Requirements

The CKAD:

The Certified Kubernetes Application Developer exam certifies that users can design, build, configure, and expose cloud native applications for Kubernetes. A Certified Kubernetes Application Developer can define application resources and use core primitives to build, monitor, and troubleshoot scalable applications and tools in Kubernetes.

• "design, build, configure, and expose" (a troubleshoot) Kubernetes apps
• 2 hour duration
• Does not qualify for CKSP (Not a Platform Mgmt Cert)

The Requirements

CKA (3 hours):

Application Lifecycle Management 8%
Installation, Configuration & Validation 12%
Core Concepts 19%
Networking 11%
Scheduling 5%
Security 12%
Cluster Maintenance 11%
Logging / Monitoring 5%
Storage 7%
Troubleshooting 10%

CKAD (2 hours):

20% – Pod Design
18% Configuration
13% – Core Concepts
13% – Services & Networking
10% Multi-Container Pods
18% – Observability
8% – State Persistence

Application Lifecycle Management 8%
20% – Pod Design
Installation, Configuration & Validation 12%
18% Configuration
Core Concepts 19%
13% – Core Concepts
Networking 11%
13% – Services & Networking
Scheduling 5%
10% Multi-Container Pods
Security 12%
Cluster Maintenance 11%
Logging / Monitoring 5%
18% – Observability
Storage 7%
8% – State Persistence
Troubleshooting 10%

The CKAD curriculum makes up ~2/3 of the CKA

https://github.com/cncf/curriculum

Exam Makeup:

CKAD: ~20 questions
CKA: ~30+ questions

Questions range from 2% to 9%
Floating passing mark
Chrome Only

CKAD Resources:

• https://github.com/dgkanatsios/CKAD-exercises
• https://github.com/twajr/ckad-prep-notes
• https://github.com/matthewpalmer/golden-guide-...
• https://www.reddit.com/r/kubernetes/
• https://medium.com/devopslinks/
• https://medium.com/chotot-techblog/

CKA Resources:

• https://github.com/kelseyhightower/kubernetes-the-hard-way
• https://medium.com/@krystiannowaczyk/
• Google Docs - CKA Exam guide
• https://github.com/walidshaari/Kubernetes-Certified-Administrator
• Linux Academy - Certified Kubernetes Administrator

They even have Slack channels for them:

Thank you for your time and Happy Kubeing!