CKA & CKAD Study Guide
Comprehensive study notes for both the Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) and Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) exams. Each page is tagged with exam relevance so you know what to focus on.
Exam Overview
| CKA | CKAD | |
|---|---|---|
| Focus | Cluster administration, setup, maintenance | Application lifecycle, deployment, configuration |
| Format | Performance-based (live cluster) | Performance-based (live cluster) |
| Duration | 2 hours | 2 hours |
| Passing Score | 66% | 66% |
| Questions | ~17 tasks | ~16 tasks |
| Kubernetes Version | 1.31 (as of 2026) | 1.31 (as of 2026) |
| Allowed Resources | kubernetes.io/docs, kubernetes.io/blog, helm.sh/docs | kubernetes.io/docs, kubernetes.io/blog, helm.sh/docs |
CKA Exam Domains
| Domain | Weight |
|---|---|
| Cluster Architecture, Installation & Configuration | 25% |
| Workloads & Scheduling | 15% |
| Services & Networking | 20% |
| Storage | 10% |
| Troubleshooting | 30% |
CKAD Exam Domains
| Domain | Weight |
|---|---|
| Application Design and Build | 20% |
| Application Deployment | 20% |
| Application Observability and Maintenance | 15% |
| Application Environment, Configuration and Security | 25% |
| Services & Networking | 20% |
Study Notes — Table of Contents
| # | Topic | CKA | CKAD | Key Concepts |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 01 | Core Concepts | ✅ | ✅ | Pods, Namespaces, API primitives, kubectl essentials |
| 02 | Cluster Architecture | ✅ | — | Control plane, etcd, kubelet, kube-proxy, kubeadm |
| 03 | Workloads | ✅ | ✅ | Deployments, ReplicaSets, DaemonSets, StatefulSets, Jobs, CronJobs |
| 04 | Scheduling | ✅ | ✅ | nodeSelector, affinity, taints, tolerations, resource limits, static pods |
| 05 | Configuration | ✅ | ✅ | ConfigMaps, Secrets, env vars, SecurityContext, ServiceAccounts |
| 06 | Networking & Services | ✅ | ✅ | Services, Ingress, NetworkPolicy, DNS, CNI |
| 07 | Storage | ✅ | ✅ | Volumes, PV, PVC, StorageClass, CSI |
| 08 | Security & RBAC | ✅ | ✅ | Roles, ClusterRoles, Bindings, Pod Security, Certificates |
| 09 | Cluster Maintenance | ✅ | — | Upgrades, etcd backup/restore, drain/cordon, OS maintenance |
| 10 | Troubleshooting | ✅ | ✅ | Debug pods, nodes, services, networking, cluster components |
| 11 | Observability | ✅ | ✅ | Probes, logging, monitoring, resource metrics |
| 12 | Helm & Kustomize | ✅ | ✅ | Helm install/upgrade/rollback, Kustomize overlays |
| 13 | Exam Tips & Speed | ✅ | ✅ | Aliases, shortcuts, time management, bookmarks |
How to Use These Notes
- Read each page in order — they build on each other
- Practice every command — reading is not enough; type every
kubectlcommand in a real cluster - Use killer.sh — you get 2 free sessions with each exam registration; do them in the final 2 weeks
- Bookmark kubernetes.io — it's the only reference allowed; learn to navigate it fast
- Tag focus: if you're only doing CKA, you can skip CKAD-only sections (but there aren't many — most overlap)