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Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD)

CKADCertified Kubernetes Application Developer

The Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) certification validates your ability to design, build, configure, and expose cloud-native applications for Kubernetes. It is aimed at developers who work with container images, microservices, and Kubernetes resource definitions. Earning CKAD proves you can apply cloud-native concepts and troubleshoot real-world application deployments in a live cluster environment.

Practice Free Questions

363 practice questions · Updated 2026-07-30

5Domains
17Objectives
126Concepts
363Questions

CKAD Curriculum

Every domain, objective, and concept the CKAD exam measures.

Define, build and modify container images

7 concepts · 21 questions
  1. Container image definition
  2. Dockerfile instructions
  3. Building container images
  4. Modifying container images
  5. Image optimization
  6. Image tagging and versioning
  7. Image push and pull

Choose and use the right workload resource (Deployment, DaemonSet, CronJob, etc.)

8 concepts · 21 questions
  1. Workload resource selection
  2. Deployment management
  3. DaemonSet management
  4. CronJob management
  5. Job management
  6. StatefulSet management
  7. ReplicaSet management
  8. Workload resource comparison

Understand multi-container Pod design patterns (e.g. sidecar, init and others)

5 concepts · 21 questions
  1. Multi-container Pod design patterns
  2. Sidecar pattern
  3. Init containers
  4. Shared volumes and communication
  5. Lifecycle and ordering

Utilize persistent and ephemeral volumes

6 concepts · 18 questions
  1. Understanding PersistentVolumes (PVs) and PersistentVolumeClaims (PVCs)
  2. Creating and using PersistentVolumeClaims in Pods
  3. Configuring storage classes and dynamic provisioning
  4. Using ephemeral volumes (emptyDir, configMap, secret)
  5. Managing volume access modes and reclaim policies
  6. Understanding volume lifecycle and deletion behavior

Use Kubernetes primitives to implement common deployment strategies (e.g. blue/green or canary)

8 concepts · 27 questions
  1. Blue/green deployment strategy
  2. Canary deployment strategy
  3. Kubernetes primitives for deployment strategies
  4. Implementing blue/green with Kubernetes
  5. Implementing canary with Kubernetes
  6. Traffic routing and switching
  7. Rollback and version management
  8. Health checks and readiness probes in deployment strategies

Understand Deployments and how to perform rolling updates

10 concepts · 29 questions
  1. Deployment Fundamentals
  2. Deployment Creation
  3. Rolling Update Mechanics
  4. Rolling Update Execution
  5. Update Strategies
  6. Rollback Operations
  7. Update Status Monitoring
  8. Scaling Deployments
  9. Pausing and Resuming
  10. Deployment History

Use the Helm package manager to deploy existing packages

7 concepts · 23 questions
  1. Helm fundamentals
  2. Chart structure
  3. Installing charts
  4. Managing releases
  5. Uninstalling releases
  6. Working with repositories
  7. Customizing deployments with values

Understand API depreciations

4 concepts · 16 questions
  1. Identify deprecated APIs
  2. Understand API deprecation policy
  3. Check API availability
  4. Migrate to new API versions

Implement probes and health checks

7 concepts · 19 questions
  1. Liveness probes
  2. Readiness probes
  3. Startup probes
  4. Probe handlers
  5. Probe parameters
  6. Probe implementation in Pod specs
  7. Health check verification

Use built-in CLI tools to monitor Kubernetes applications

9 concepts · 21 questions
  1. kubectl get
  2. kubectl describe
  3. kubectl logs
  4. kubectl exec
  5. kubectl top
  6. kubectl events
  7. kubectl port-forward
  8. kubectl cp
  9. kubectl attach

Utilize container logs

6 concepts · 11 questions
  1. Accessing container logs
  2. Accessing logs from multi-container pods
  3. Streaming logs in real time
  4. Retrieving logs from previous container instances
  5. Selecting pods by label
  6. Limiting log output

Debugging in Kubernetes

8 concepts · 28 questions
  1. Identify failing pods
  2. Inspect pod logs
  3. Debug with exec
  4. Debug with port forwarding
  5. Debug with ephemeral containers
  6. Debug with copy
  7. Debug with events
  8. Debug with logs and metrics

Exposing Applications

7 concepts · 20 questions
  1. Service fundamentals
  2. Service types
  3. Creating and exposing services
  4. Service troubleshooting
  5. Ingress fundamentals
  6. Writing Ingress rules
  7. Ingress troubleshooting

Kubernetes Security

12 concepts · 26 questions
  1. NetworkPolicy Basics
  2. NetworkPolicy Rules
  3. NetworkPolicy Default Deny
  4. Authentication Mechanisms
  5. Authorization Modes
  6. Admission Control
  7. ServiceAccount Basics
  8. ServiceAccount Tokens
  9. SecurityContext
  10. Capabilities
  11. Privileged and ReadOnly
  12. Pod Security Standards

Application Configuration

8 concepts · 14 questions
  1. Resource Requests and Limits
  2. Resource Quotas
  3. LimitRanges
  4. ConfigMap Creation
  5. ConfigMap Consumption
  6. Secret Creation
  7. Secret Consumption
  8. Secret Types and Use Cases

Extending Kubernetes

4 concepts · 18 questions
  1. Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs)
  2. Custom Resources
  3. Operators
  4. Discovering Extended Resources

Kustomize

10 concepts · 30 questions
  1. Kustomize Overview
  2. Kustomization File Structure
  3. Bases and Overlays
  4. Common Labels and Annotations
  5. Patches (Strategic Merge and JSON Patch)
  6. ConfigMap and Secret Generators
  7. Customizing Resource Names and Namespaces
  8. Building and Applying Kustomizations
  9. Kustomize Transformers
  10. Kustomize Components
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Practice Free Questions

Percentages reflect share of the current practice bank, not official exam weightings — no structured per-skill weight is published for CKAD, so none is invented.