Research the CKAD certification, its format, and requirements. Familiarize yourself with the official Kubernetes documentation.
Review core Kubernetes concepts: Pods, Services, Deployments, ConfigMaps, Secrets, and Persistent Volumes.
Practice creating and managing basic resources. Use the kubectl command-line tool for basic operations.
Practice creating and managing ReplicationControllers and Pods. Use kubectl get rc and kubectl scale rc --replicas=
Learn about ReplicaSets and Deployments. Understand rolling updates and rollbacks.
Create a Deployment using kubectl create deployment. Scale the Deployment using kubectl scale deployment --replicas=.
Explore Labels, Selectors, and Annotations. Understand how to use these effectively in resource definitions.
Create a Job to run a batch process and ensure it completes. Use kubectl create cronjob to create a CronJob for scheduled tasks.
Study Jobs and CronJobs for batch processing and scheduled tasks.
Update a Deployment's image version using kubectl set image. Perform a rolling update and a rollback using kubectl rollout.
Dive into Services: ClusterIP, NodePort, and LoadBalancer. Understand how to expose applications internally and externally.
Create a Service of type ClusterIP to expose an app within the cluster. Create a Service of type NodePort to expose an app externally. Experiment with different service types and kubectl port-forward for local access.
Learn about Network Policies to control pod communication within the cluster.
Create Network Policies to control traffic between pods. Test the Network Policies to ensure they are enforced.
Review all networking concepts and practice creating various networking configurations.
Recap all networking concepts. Create a comprehensive example involving Services, Ingress, and Network Policies.
Study ConfigMaps and Secrets for configuration management. Understand how to inject them into pods.
Create a ConfigMap and a Secret, then consume them in a Pod. Update the ConfigMap and Secret and observe the changes in the Pod.
Explore Resource Limits and Quality of Service (QoS).
Set resource limits and requests in a Pod's definition. Use the kubectl top command to monitor resource utilization.
Learn about Pod Design and how to work with Multi-Container Pods.
Create a multi-container Pod and ensure inter-container communication. Set up liveness and readiness probes for a Pod.
Familiarize yourself with liveness and readiness probes, and practice logging and debugging techniques.
Create a Pod that generates logs, then access and analyze the logs. Simulate a container failure and debug using logs and probes.
Kubernetes Basics (official Kubernetes documentation) CKAD Certification Preparation Courses (Udemy, Linux Academy, etc.)
"Kubernetes in Action" by Marko Luksa Practice Platforms: Katacoda Kubernetes Playground (for hands-on practice) CKAD Exercises (GitHub repository with practical exercises)
Use the Kubernetes Playground and CKAD Exercises repository for hands-on practice. Create a personal Kubernetes cluster using tools like Minikube or k3s for practicing without risking production systems.
- End of Week 1: Successfully create and manage basic resources using kubectl.
- End of Week 2: Understand and implement application lifecycle management concepts.
- End of Week 3: Confidently configure services and understand networking concepts.
- End of Week 4: Competently handle configurations, observability, and debugging.
Regularly take practice tests and use mock exams to assess your readiness. If you're not meeting your milestones, allocate more time to areas where you're struggling. Focus on hands-on practice and solving real-world scenarios.