CKA

211 lessons
40 courses_modules
Level intermediate

The path for engineers who want to own and operate Kubernetes clusters at a production level. Built on top of the Common Core, this learning path takes you from cluster installation and architecture to advanced security, networking, and troubleshooting , everything the Certified Kubernetes Administrator exam expects you to master.

What you’ll learn

  • Cluster architecture & installation: Deep dive into control plane internals, installing clusters with kubeadm, node maintenance, upgrades, and etcd backup and restore
  • Workloads & scheduling: ConfigMaps, Secrets, resource management, DaemonSets, StatefulSets, Jobs, autoscaling, and advanced scheduling with taints, tolerations, and affinity rules
  • Services & networking: Service types, DNS, Ingress, the Gateway API, NetworkPolicies, and cluster networking fundamentals (CNI, iptables, IPVS)
  • Storage: Volumes, PersistentVolumes, PersistentVolumeClaims, and StorageClasses with dynamic provisioning
  • Security & auth: Service accounts, authentication, TLS certificates, kubeconfig, RBAC, security contexts, image security, admission controllers, and Pod security standards
  • Observability & troubleshooting: Logging, monitoring, and a structured troubleshooting methodology for nodes, Pods, and networking

Who is this for?

Platform engineers, DevOps practitioners, and SREs who deploy and maintain Kubernetes infrastructure. If your job involves keeping clusters healthy, securing workloads, and debugging production issues, this is your path.

Prerequisites: Complete the Common Core path first , this path builds directly on those foundations.

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Course content

Fundamentals

Onboarding 3 lessons
Welcome What Runs Here Overview of Kubernetes Certifications
Kubernetes Basics & API 7 lessons
What Is Kubernetes Cluster Architecture Overview Control Plane Components Node Components API Groups API Versions API Deprecation Policy
Yaml And Objects 3 lessons
The Kubernetes Object Model Anatomy of a Manifest Object Names, UIDs, and DNS Rules
Kubectl Essentials 7 lessons
Imperative vs Declarative Viewing Resources Inspecting Running Containers Creating and Editing Resources Delete and Cleanup Formatting Output and Tips Field Selectors
Kubeconfig 4 lessons
What Is a Kubeconfig File Clusters, Users, and Contexts Switching Contexts Creating a Kubeconfig from Scratch
Pods 9 lessons
What Is a Pod Pod Structure Creating Your First Pod Pod Lifecycle and Phases Container Restart Policies Editing Pods Docker ENTRYPOINT and CMD command and args in Kubernetes Practical Override Scenarios
Organizing Resources 8 lessons
What Are Namespaces The Default Namespaces Working Across Namespaces When to Use Multiple Namespaces What Are Labels Label Selectors Annotations Recommended Labels

Cluster architecture & installation

Cluster Architecture Deep 5 lessons
etcd Deep Dive kube-apiserver Internals kube-scheduler Internals kube-controller-manager Internals Container Runtime Interface
Cluster Installation 4 lessons Coming Soon
installation-options-overview kubeadm-master-node-setup kubeadm-worker-node-join high-availability-considerations
Cluster Maintenance 3 lessons Coming Soon
os-upgrades-and-drain version-skew-policy cluster-upgrade-process
Backup And Restore 5 lessons Coming Soon
backup-strategies etcd-backup-with-etcdctl restore-from-snapshot etcdutl etcd-restore-drill-end-to-end

Workloads

ReplicaSets & Deployments 9 lessons
Why ReplicaSets Creating a ReplicaSet Scaling and Self-Healing Limitations of ReplicaSets What Is a Deployment Creating a Deployment Rolling Updates Rollback and Revision History Update Strategies
Daemonsets 4 lessons
What Is a DaemonSet Typical DaemonSet Use Cases DaemonSet Scheduling Updating DaemonSets
Jobs 4 lessons
What Is a Job Job Parallelism and Completions Job Failure, Backoff, and Retry CronJobs
Multi Container Pods 5 lessons
Why Multiple Containers in a Pod The Sidecar Pattern Ambassador and Adapter Patterns Init Containers Native Sidecar Containers
Probes 5 lessons
Why Probes Matter Liveness Probes Readiness Probes Startup Probes Probe Types and Configuration
Statefulsets 5 lessons
Stateful vs Stateless StatefulSet Fundamentals Headless Services Storage in StatefulSets StatefulSet Ordering and Updates

Configuration & scheduling

Configmaps 5 lessons
What Is a ConfigMap Creating ConfigMaps Using ConfigMaps via Environment Variables Using ConfigMaps via Volume Mounts Immutable ConfigMaps
Secrets 5 lessons
What Is a Secret Secret Types Creating and Using Secrets in Pods Encrypting Secrets at Rest Secrets Security Best Practices
Resource Management 5 lessons
Resource Requests and Limits How Scheduling Uses Requests What Happens When Limits Are Exceeded QoS Classes LimitRanges and ResourceQuotas
Scheduling Basics 4 lessons
Taints and Tolerations Node Selectors Node Affinity Taints vs Node Affinity
Advanced Scheduling 4 lessons
Manual Scheduling Static Pods Priority Classes Multiple Schedulers
Autoscaling 5 lessons
Introduction to Autoscaling Horizontal Pod Autoscaler HPA Stabilization and Behavior Vertical Pod Autoscaler In-Place Pod Resource Resize

Services & networking

Networking Fundamentals 4 lessons Coming Soon
switching-and-routing dns-fundamentals network-namespaces docker-networking
Kubernetes Networking 6 lessons Coming Soon
cni-concepts pod-networking service-networking cluster-networking-configuration ipam cni-troubleshooting-method
Services 6 lessons
Why Services Services and Endpoints ClusterIP NodePort LoadBalancer Named Ports
Dns 4 lessons
DNS in Kubernetes Service DNS Records Pod DNS Records DNS Debugging
Gateway Api 6 lessons Coming Soon
introduction-to-gateway-api gateway-api-structure practical-gateway-api tls-with-gateway-api Services vs Gateway API: Choosing Your Entry Point httproute-basics
Network Policies 5 lessons
What Are Network Policies? NetworkPolicy Structure Ingress Rules Egress Rules Advanced NetworkPolicy Patterns

Storage

Volumes & Persistent Storage 8 lessons
Why Volumes? emptyDir hostPath PersistentVolumes and PersistentVolumeClaims Creating a PersistentVolume Creating a PersistentVolumeClaim Using PVCs in Pods Access Modes and Reclaim Policies
Storage Classes 4 lessons Coming Soon
static-vs-dynamic-provisioning what-is-a-storageclass dynamic-provisioning-in-practice container-storage-interface

Security & auth

Authentication & Service Accounts 7 lessons
Kubernetes Security Fundamentals How Kubernetes Authenticates Identities Users vs ServiceAccounts What Is a ServiceAccount Creating and Assigning ServiceAccounts Token Projection and Automount ServiceAccount Practical Scenarios
Tls Certificates 5 lessons
TLS and PKI Basics How Kubernetes Uses TLS Creating Certificates Viewing Certificate Details The Kubernetes Certificates API
Rbac 5 lessons
Authorization in Kubernetes Roles and RoleBindings ClusterRoles and ClusterRoleBindings Testing Permissions with kubectl auth can-i RBAC Best Practices
Security Contexts 4 lessons
Container Security: Linux Primitives Pod vs Container Security Context Running Containers as Non-Root Capabilities and Read-Only Root Filesystem
Pod & Image Security 6 lessons
Image Naming and Registries Pulling from Private Registries with imagePullSecrets Image Pull Policies Pod Security Standards Pod Security Admission Practical PSS Enforcement
Admission Controllers 4 lessons
What Are Admission Controllers Enabling and Disabling Admission Controllers Validating Admission Webhooks Mutating Admission Webhooks

Observability & troubleshooting

Observability & Troubleshooting 10 lessons Coming Soon
Container Logging Basics Monitoring with Metrics Server Kubernetes Events Monitoring Cluster Component Logs troubleshooting-application-failures troubleshooting-service-connectivity troubleshooting-control-plane troubleshooting-worker-nodes systematic-debugging-methodology debug-distroless-with-kubectl-debug

API & extensibility

Custom Resources 4 lessons Coming Soon
what-are-custom-resources creating-a-crd custom-controllers operator-pattern
Helm 5 lessons Coming Soon
what-is-helm installing-helm working-with-charts values-and-configuration finding-and-using-charts