Certified Kubernetes Application Developer Exam Prep

Covers core skills for designing and building Kubernetes application resources, including Pods, multi-container patterns, configuration injection, local container tooling, Helm packaging, and metadata design. This domain emphasizes creating valid manifests, validating resources, and preparing applications for deployment.

• Task 1.1: Define and create Pods and basic workload resources
• Create Pods imperatively and declaratively using YAML manifests
• Configure container images, commands, arguments, and exposed container ports
• Work with namespaces and organize application resources in the correct scope
• Validate resource creation using kubectl get, describe, and generated YAML
• Task 1.2: Design multi-container and init-container based Pods
• Build Pods with multiple containers for sidecar, adapter, or helper use cases

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

Covers workload controllers and lifecycle management, including Deployments, rollouts, Jobs, CronJobs, autoscaling, and progressive delivery patterns. This domain focuses on creating, updating, observing, and controlling application workloads.

• Task 2.1: Create and manage Deployments
• Create Deployments with replica counts, selectors, and Pod templates
• Update container images and observe rollout progress and status
• Scale Deployments manually and verify ReplicaSet and Pod behavior
• Inspect Deployment, ReplicaSet, and Pod manifests to understand controller relationships
• Task 2.2: Perform rollout strategies and revision management
• Check rollout history and inspect specific revisions

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

Covers workload identity, resource governance, security context settings, scheduling placement controls, and extensibility-related resources. This domain emphasizes configuring workloads safely and ensuring they comply with cluster policies and placement requirements.

• Task 3.1: Manage ServiceAccounts and workload identity
• Create and assign ServiceAccounts to Pods and Deployments
• Verify which ServiceAccount a workload is using
• Understand default versus explicitly assigned ServiceAccount behavior
• Reference ServiceAccounts in workload manifests correctly
• Task 3.2: Apply resource governance with requests, limits, quotas, and ranges
• Set resource requests and limits for containers in workload specs

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

Covers exposing applications with Services, in-cluster communication, DNS-based discovery, backend selection, and default networking behavior. This domain focuses on how workloads communicate and how traffic is routed within the cluster.

• Task 4.1: Expose applications with Services
• Create Services to expose Pods on stable virtual IPs and ports
• Map Service ports to container ports correctly
• Verify endpoint registration for backing Pods
• Inspect Service and Endpoint resources to confirm traffic targets
• Task 4.2: Enable in-cluster communication and DNS-based discovery
• Test Pod-to-Pod and Pod-to-Service connectivity from temporary client Pods

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

Covers diagnosing workload problems, collecting logs, executing commands for live debugging, monitoring resource state, and performing cleanup and verification. This domain emphasizes operational troubleshooting and maintaining healthy cluster resources.

• Task 5.1: Inspect workload health and diagnose startup issues
• Use kubectl describe to identify scheduling, image, and runtime problems
• Inspect Pod status, events, and container state transitions
• Use kubectl explain to understand relevant manifest fields during troubleshooting
• Confirm whether resources were created successfully and are running as expected
• Task 5.2: Collect logs and runtime diagnostics
• Retrieve container logs from running and completed workloads

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