CKAD

CNCF Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD)

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CKAD Curriculum until 2025-03-22

Application Design and Build 20%

• 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

Application Deployment 20%

• 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

Application Observability and Maintenance 15%

• Understand API deprecations
• Implement probes and health checks
• Use built-in CLI tools to monitor Kubernetes applications
• Utilize container logs
• Debugging in Kubernetes

Application Environment, Configuration and Security 25%

• 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.)

Services and Networking 20%

• Demonstrate basic understanding of NetworkPolicies
• Provide and troubleshoot access to applications via services
• Use Ingress rules to expose applications