KCNA Kubernetes and Cloud Native Associate | KCNA Exam

Explore Kubernetes architecture, focusing on control plane and node components, and how deployment and scheduling enable scalable, self-healing container orchestration. Learn core services like kube-api-server, kube-scheduler, kube-controller-manager, kubelet, and namespaces.

Explore Kubernetes installation options for learning and production, from online test clusters like Play with Kubernetes and Killer Koda to local tools such as Kind, Minikube, Docker Desktop, and MicroKubernetes.

Demonstrate using Docker Desktop to run Kubernetes on a MacBook Air M1, enable Kubernetes in settings and restart, then verify with kubectl version and kubectl get all from the terminal.

Master kubectl, the official Kubernetes command-line interface, to deploy applications and manage resources. Run kubectl get pods, kubectl apply -f, and view logs across Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Explore essential kubectl commands to manage Kubernetes clusters, including version checks, help, config view, explain, apply a breezyweather pod manifest, and list, describe, and delete pods.

Explore the Kubernetes API, the cluster's central http interface for creating, modifying, and retrieving resources via kubectl or rest calls, and learn its versioning, groups, and extension with custom resources.

Discover how Kubernetes API versioning and groups organize resources like pods, services, and deployments, using kubectl api-resources to compare v1, v2, apps/v1, and rbak.authorization.kubernetes.io/v1.

Discover how containers revolutionize packaging and deployments with namespaces. Explore container images, stateless design, and how Kubernetes orchestrates them across runtimes such as containerd and registries aligned with the OCI.

Schedule pods to nodes with the kubescheduler, evaluating resources, constraints, and priorities, node selectors and affinities, to bind pods to suitable nodes. Define resource requests and limits to guide scheduling.

Explore Kubernetes resources as objects managed by imperative or declarative approaches, using kubectl with YAML or JSON. Store configuration in Git to enable repeatable deployments and an audit trail.

Explore Kubernetes workload resources, including pods, replica sets, deployments, jobs, and cron jobs, and learn how pods group containers, support sidecar and unit containers, and progress through lifecycle states.

Deployments support stateless apps with interchangeable pods and no fixed order. Stateful sets support stateful apps with unique identities and persistent storage, using a headless service for pod discovery.

Manage pods in a local Kubernetes cluster using kubectl and yaml manifests. Create pods, sidecar and init containers, verify status with kubectl get pods, and delete with kubectl delete -f.

Learn to manage deployments in a local Kubernetes cluster with kubectl: create, view, scale from 2 to 4 pods, then down to 3, and delete the deployment using the manifest.

Explore Kubernetes network resources: services, endpoints, ingress, and network policy. Learn how services offer load balancing, DNS, and selectors; endpoints map to pods; ingress enables access; network policy governs traffic.

Use kubectl to expose a deployment with a service in a local kubernetes cluster, create manifests, and access the REST API via the service IP.

Learn how service accounts, roles, and bindings manage access control and permissions in Kubernetes namespaces, and how cluster roles and cluster role bindings grant cluster-wide privileges.

Explore cluster resources, including nodes and namespaces, to manage containers and microservices in Kubernetes, as worker nodes execute tasks assigned by the master, and namespaces provide isolation and access control.

Configure Kubernetes configurations with ConfigMap and Secret, mount a ConfigMap as a volume or map it to environment variables, and apply base64-encoded secret data with proper access control.

Kubernetes uses volumes, persistent volumes, and persistent volume claims to persist and share data beyond pod lifecycles, with emptyDir and hostPath types and CSI-enabled provisioning for static or dynamic storage.

Demonstrates using Kubernetes secrets and volumes by creating a database connection secret and mounting it into a pod, with yaml output and cleanup steps.

Define custom resources with CRDs to expose new object types on the Kubernetes API server, and contrast with the aggregation layer for creating fully custom API endpoints.

Explore Kubernetes autoscaling mechanisms: horizontal pod autoscaler, cluster autoscaler, vertical pod autoscaler, and add-on resizer, how they adjust pods and cluster resources to meet demand, optimizing cost and performance.

Explore container orchestration fundamentals with Kubernetes, enabling deployments, scaling, auto-healing, and monitoring to manage containerized apps at scale.

Explore container runtime in Kubernetes, including CRI and OCI standards, and learn how runtimes like ContainerD, Cryo, RunC, and Docker Engine enable seamless Kubelet integration.

Explore how Docker enables containerized applications with Docker Hub and Docker Desktop, using commands like docker run, docker image ls, and docker container ls to manage images and containers.

Explore building a docker image from nginx by creating a simple dockerfile that copies an index.html and exposes port 80, then build with docker build -t kcnet docker demo.

Apply defense in depth across code, container, cluster, and cloud to secure Kubernetes. Enforce encryption in transit and at rest, manage secrets, implement pod security standards, network policies, and auditing.

Explore Kubernetes networking requirements and the container-to-container and pod-to-pod communication types. Understand pod-to-service with a stable DNS name and load balancing, and grasp network policy and CNI plugins.

Explore kubectl communication types for services by using explain to inspect service fields and types such as cluster IP, node port, load balancer, and external name; create and view services.

Explore service mesh, the data and control planes, with sidecar proxies that enable automatic load balancing, encryption with identity, traffic management, and observability for all pod traffic.

Learn how Kubernetes storage ensures data persistence with volumes that outlive containers, including ephemeral volumes: empty dir, config map, secret, and persistent volumes: host path, NFS, CSI.

Examine cloud-native architecture for building scalable, secure apps in public, private, and hybrid clouds using containers, microservices, backing services, and infrastructure automation.

Explore auto-scaling in cloud-native architecture, using metrics like CPU and memory to automatically adjust resources via vertical scaling, horizontal scaling, and cluster auto-scaling, suited to different traffic patterns.

Explore serverless computing in Kubernetes, with auto-scaling by events and cloud events, and examine services like Azure Container Apps, AKS, EKS, Azure Functions, Cosmos DB, and Azure SQL Database serverless.

Explore Azure and AWS serverless solutions, including Azure Functions, Container Apps, AKS, App Service, DevOps, SQL Database, Cosmos DB, Blob Storage, Lambda, Fargate, SQS, SNS, API Gateway, S3, DynamoDB.

Discover how CNCF governs open-source cloud-native projects with minimum viable governance, self-governance, and maturity stages from sandbox through incubation to graduation, illustrated by Kubernetes, Containerity, and Helm governance.

Explore the CNCF landscape for cloud-native tools, from Kubernetes deployment and Helm packaging to GitOps with Argo and Flux, KEDA autoscaling, Istio service mesh, and observability with Prometheus and Jager.

Learn core cloud-native roles such as site reliability engineer, cloud architect, devops engineer, and finops. Discover how service-level objectives, indicators, error budgets, and security engineers guide secure, scalable cloud infrastructure.

Explore open standards that enable Kubernetes to run across environments, including OCI for containers and runtimes, and interfaces like cri, cni, csi, smi, and cpi.

Discover observability and telemetry for microservices and container orchestration, leveraging CNCF tools like Fluentd, Jaeger, and Prometheus, and apply logging with Docker, Kubernetes, Fluentd, Filebit, Grafana, and OpenSearch.

Explore tracing in microservice architectures; learn how traces and spans capture request flows and how OpenTelemetry standardizes telemetry for exporting data to Jaeger to monitor and troubleshoot distributed workflows.

Prometheus provides open-source monitoring and alerting for Kubernetes and containers, collecting time-series metrics via pull model, with PromQL, labels, service discovery, Grafana, and metric types: counter, gauge, histogram, and summary.

Learn how health probing keeps apps reliable by using liveness, readiness, and startup probes to detect issues, ensure startup success, and maintain availability and performance.

Implement a liveness probe for a Kubernetes deployment using HTTP GET to api/v1/health/live, apply the manifest, and monitor health with kubectl events to prepare readiness and startup probes.

Identify waste, deprovision unused resources, and right-size for workloads to cut cloud costs. Leverage reserved instances and tools like Azure Advisor and AWS Cost Explorer to optimize spending.

Explore Azure reserved instances and how they cut VM costs up to 80% with 1-year or 3-year options versus on-demand. Spot and hybrid benefits boost savings, though spot has limitations.

Master the application delivery fundamentals, from Git version control and Docker container builds to Kubernetes deployment via YAML and infrastructure as code automation.

Explore how GitOps uses Git as the source of truth to manage Kubernetes infrastructure and applications through infrastructure as code, pull requests, and CI/CD, enabling immutable deployments and automation.

Demonstrates using kustomize to define infrastructure as code, configuring deployment and service manifests, creating a customization.yaml, applying with kubectl -k, and viewing resources in staging with environment dev labels.

Explore how ci/cd automates software delivery from development to production, enabling faster, more confident releases through continuous integration, automated testing, and pipelines with version control, dev or staging environments.

Practice kubectl daily to build familiarity with Kubernetes and use Docker Desktop to create resources. Take practice tests, choose online proctored slots, and review the PSI tutorial and study guide.

Celebrate your KCNA certification by adding the badge to LinkedIn, take a brief break, and prepare for the CKAD or CKA exam to deepen Kubernetes proficiency and broaden career opportunities.