Kubernetes is at the core of the cloud native movement. The Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) exam certifies that users can design, build, configure, and expose cloud native applications for Kubernetes. The CKAD was developed by the Linux Foundation and the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) to support the growth of the Kubernetes community. The exam is taken online, supervised, and performance-based, meaning candidates complete several tasks using the Kubernetes command line.
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.
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
Course Outline
Lesson 1: Application Design and Build
- 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
Lesson 2: Application Deployment
- 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
Lesson 3: Application Observability and Maintenance
- Understand API deprecations
- Implement probes and health checks
- Use built-in CLI tools to monitor Kubernetes applications
- Utilize container logs
- Debugging in Kubernetes
Lesson 4: Application Environment, Configuration and Security
- 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.)
Lesson 5: Services and Networking
- Demonstrate basic understanding of NetworkPolicies
- Provide and troubleshoot access to applications via services
- Use Ingress rules to expose applications