Certified Kubernetes Administrator Exam Prep

Covers cluster bootstrap, lifecycle operations, certificates, contexts, backup and restore, and basic health inspection. This domain focuses on foundational administration tasks needed to install, access, maintain, and recover a Kubernetes cluster.

• Task 1: Manage cluster bootstrap and lifecycle
• Use `kubeadm` to initialize and join cluster nodes
• Plan and perform control plane version upgrades
• Drain, cordon, and uncordon nodes during maintenance
• Verify component versions after upgrade operations
• Task 2: Manage Kubernetes certificates and authentication artifacts
• Inspect kubeconfig settings and active contexts

Key references: CKA official exam guide · ExamPal shared topic tree

Covers creating, updating, and troubleshooting workloads, as well as controlling where Pods run. This domain includes multi-container Pods, static Pods, scheduling behavior, and custom scheduler usage.

• Task 1: Create and manage Pods, Deployments, and higher-level workloads
• Create Pods and Deployments from imperative commands or YAML
• Scale Deployments to desired replica counts
• Update container images and verify rollout status
• Roll back Deployments to previous stable revisions
• Task 2: Configure multi-container Pods and static Pods
• Create Pods with multiple application containers

Key references: CKA official exam guide · ExamPal shared topic tree

Covers exposing applications with Services, configuring Ingress routing, implementing network security controls, and inspecting cluster networking state. This domain emphasizes service discovery, traffic routing, and policy-based access control.

• Task 1: Expose applications with Services
• List and inspect Services across namespaces
• Create Services to expose Pod-backed applications
• Sort and query Service information for verification
• Validate endpoints and service-to-pod matching
• Task 2: Configure Ingress routing
• Create Ingress resources for HTTP path-based routing

Key references: CKA official exam guide · ExamPal shared topic tree

Covers persistent storage objects, volume attachment to workloads, node-local storage, and storage troubleshooting. This domain focuses on matching storage requirements to Kubernetes volume resources and diagnosing binding or mount issues.

• Task 1: Manage PersistentVolumes and PersistentVolumeClaims
• Create PersistentVolumes with required capacity and access modes
• Create PersistentVolumeClaims with appropriate storage classes
• Verify binding status between PVs and PVCs
• Inspect storage objects for configuration correctness
• Task 2: Attach persistent storage to workloads
• Mount PVC-backed volumes into Pods at required paths

Key references: CKA official exam guide · ExamPal shared topic tree

Covers diagnosing failed workloads, node and kubelet issues, resource usage symptoms, and control plane behavior. This domain emphasizes root-cause analysis, corrective action, and verification of restored functionality.

• Task 1: Troubleshoot failed workloads
• Describe Pods to identify startup and scheduling issues
• Retrieve logs from application containers
• Extract specific log lines and write results to files
• Output clean resource YAML for diagnosis or recreation
• Task 2: Troubleshoot cluster nodes and kubelet issues
• Investigate NotReady worker nodes

Key references: CKA official exam guide · ExamPal shared topic tree

Covers namespaces, ConfigMaps, Secrets, RBAC roles and bindings, and authorization testing. This domain focuses on securing access, defining least-privilege permissions, and validating effective authorization.

• Task 1: Manage namespaces and core configuration objects
• Create namespaces and list existing namespaces
• Create and inspect ConfigMaps in the cluster
• Create Secrets from literal values and manifests
• Verify stored object data and references
• Task 2: Create and validate RBAC roles
• Create Roles with least-privilege permissions

Key references: CKA official exam guide · ExamPal shared topic tree