Here are the key modules you should study for the Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) exam:
Core Application Lifecycle Management
- Understanding deployment strategies (rolling updates, blue-green, canary)
- Creating and managing Deployments, ReplicaSets, and Pods
- Scaling applications up and down
- Managing application rollouts and rollbacks
Configuration
- Working with ConfigMaps and Secrets
- Environment variables and configuration injection
- Volume mounts for configuration data
- Managing sensitive information securely
Multi-Container Pods
- Sidecar container patterns
- Init containers and their use cases
- Container communication within pods
- Shared volumes between containers
Observability
- Implementing health checks (liveness, readiness, startup probes)
- Container logging and log analysis
- Monitoring and debugging applications
- Understanding pod and container metrics
Pod Design
- Labels and selectors
- Annotations and their proper usage
- Service discovery mechanisms
- Pod networking fundamentals
Services and Networking
- Creating and configuring Services (ClusterIP, NodePort, LoadBalancer)
- Ingress controllers and routing
- Network policies for security
- DNS resolution in Kubernetes
State Persistence
- Persistent Volumes and Persistent Volume Claims
- Storage classes and dynamic provisioning
- StatefulSets for stateful applications
- Data backup and recovery concepts
The exam is entirely hands-on, so focus on practical exercises with kubectl commands and YAML manifests rather than just theory. Practice creating, modifying, and troubleshooting these resources in a real Kubernetes environment.
Last updated: 2025-08-26 20:00 UTC