Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD)

Published weight 20%. Building and modifying OCI container images, selecting appropriate workload resources, multi-container Pod design patterns, and persistent and ephemeral volumes.

• Define, build and modify container images
• Choose and use the right workload resource (Deployment, DaemonSet, CronJob, etc.)
• Understand multi-container Pod design patterns (sidecar, init, and others)
• Utilize persistent and ephemeral volumes

Published weight 20%. Deployment strategies (blue/green, canary), rolling updates, and the packaging tools Helm and Kustomize.

• Use Kubernetes primitives to implement common deployment strategies (blue/green or canary)
• Understand Deployments and how to perform rolling updates
• Use the Helm package manager to deploy existing packages
• Use Kustomize to manage and customize configuration

Published weight 15%. API deprecations, probes and health checks, monitoring via built-in CLI tools, container logs, and debugging.

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

Published weight 25% (largest domain). Extending Kubernetes (CRDs, Operators), authentication/authorization/admission control, requests/limits/quotas, ConfigMaps, Secrets, ServiceAccounts, and application security.

• Discover and use resources that extend Kubernetes (CRD, Operators)
• Understand authentication, authorization and admission control
• Understand requests, limits, quotas and define resource requirements
• Understand ConfigMaps, create and consume Secrets, and understand ServiceAccounts
• Understand application security (SecurityContexts, Capabilities, and more)

Published weight 20%. NetworkPolicies, providing and troubleshooting service access, and exposing applications via Ingress.

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