Update

May 30th, 2019 - The CNCF has announced that the CKA certification is now valid for 36 months and not 24 months, as was previously the case.

Links

• Official Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) Program website - https://www.cncf.io/certification/cka/ 
• Official Kubernetes documentation - https://kubernetes.io/docs

Transcript

Welcome to Cloud Academy's Certified Kubernetes Administrator exam preparation learning path, I'm Logan Rakai, a content researcher and developer here at Cloud Academy. I'm also a certified Kubernetes administrator. In this short video, I'll introduce you to this learning path that has been designed to help you succeed when taking the Cloud Native Computing Foundation's Certified Kubernetes Administrator Exam. 

The CKA exam is a practical exam that tests your ability to administer Kubernetes clusters. The exam covers Kubernetes skills in the following domains. Application Lifecycle Management, Cluster Maintenance, Core Concepts, Installation, Configuration, and Validation, Logging and Monitoring, Networking, Scheduling, Security, Storage, and Troubleshooting. Certifications expire 24 months after being achieved, at which time the certification expires, you can keep your certification active by passing the exam again before your certification expiration date. 

This learning path has a lot of tips to help you succeed in passing the exam and the summary video near the end of the learning path will explain the exam procedure. A link to the official exam website is provided in the transcript of this video. From there you can find several documents, including the official candidate handbook, and a curriculum overview. 

This learning path is designed around the exam domains. Although Kubernetes administrators are the intended audience for this learning path, anyone interested in understanding more about how Kubernetes works, or how to work with Kubernetes, should consider completing this learning path. Before you take this learning path, you should already be comfortable with containers and Docker in particular. If you need to develop your container know-how, the Docker in Depth learning path here at Cloud Academy is a great way to develop your skills. 

We'll quickly touch on the content that is included in this learning path, I'll also highlight which domains each piece of content mainly relates to on the right. Most domains are covered in multiple pieces of content. The learning path begins with the Introduction to Kubernetes course. We'll spend a lot of time at the command line, building up Application Lifecycle Management, Core Concept, and Storage Domain knowledge. Next is the first lab, which begins by configuring Red Hat Enterprise Linux servers to form a 2-node Kubernetes cluster, and finishes by deploying a stateless application on it. The following lab uses a pre-built cluster of nodes running in Amazon Web Services. The nodes are running Ubuntu 16.04, similar to the actual CKA exam. You'll learn about several domains as you deploy replicated MySQL database in Kubernetes. You will then take an exam that will verify your understanding in four of the domains that are covered by earlier content. You should be able to answer the questions comfortably before moving on. Review the earlier content as much as required before moving on. Then you will take a course devoted to several important aspects of administering Kubernetes clusters. This is the final course covering CKA domains in the learning path. Labs make up the bulk of the learning path. The labs will help you build up the hands-on experience you need to pass the CKA exam. Next is a lab that trains you on how to troubleshoot in Kubernetes. You'll learn how to diagnose and resolve issues at different levels in the Kubernetes stack. This is followed by securing Kubernetes clusters. This lab covers all of the Security Domain topics of the exam, including Kubernetes network security. The final lab gets into the details of creating a Kubernetes cluster from scratch and performing common maintenance tasks, such as backing up, restoring, and upgrading the cluster. Next is a short course that teaches you about taking the actual CKA exam. As you know, the exam isn't the run of the mill, multiple choice exam. There are some things to know before you write the exam to not waste precious time during the exam. The learning path finishes with an exam that covers all of the domains in the CKA exam. If you do well on this exam, and are comfortable working with Kubernetes at the command line, then you should be in good shape for the actual exam. 

There are a few things to keep in mind while you go through the learning path. Because the exam allows you to have one browser tap open to the official Kubernetes documentation, I encourage you to become familiar with it. While you are going through the learning path, try to reinforce your learning by finding relevant parts of the documentation. You don't want to become overly dependent on the documentation, however. The exam has a time limit, and every second counts. The exam follows a three month update cycle. This roughly coincides with the release cycle of new versions of Kubernetes. Don't feel panicked if the exam updates to a new version just before you take the exam, or if some of the learning path contents uses an older version. Although new versions are released every quarter, the concepts in Kubernetes generally change much more slowly, as an example, even after a generally available feature, or CLI element becomes deprecated, it must function for at least another year before support is removed. All of that being said, we will do our best to keep the content up to date, and point out when something has changed. For example, in the Introduction to Kubernetes course, I have placed notes at the top of the transcripts for videos when minor changes have taken place. We're happy to hear from you. 

As with everything you see on Cloud Academy, please give us your feedback on this learning path when you have completed it. 

That's all for this learning path intro, now it's time for you to continue on with the learning path to becoming a Certified Kubernetes Administrator.