Chad Crowell

You can’t “hack” the Certified Kubernetes Administrator by learning a few test-taking tricks. Acing the Certified Kubernetes Administrator Exam, Second Edition teaches every skill you need to pass the CKA by guiding you through realistic CLI exercises that mirror the actual test format.

You’ll practice all the exam objectives hands-on, including deploying containerized applications to Kubernetes, accessing an application from a gateway API resource, and blocking traffic inside the cluster using Network Policies. Plus, essential exam tips and exercises help you work out your mental muscle memory.

Congratulations! You’re the new Kubernetes administrator at Interpop, a popular music-streaming company. Since its service gets roughly a million requests per second, its goal is to maintain end user comfort by providing a secure and reliable connection to its site, while behind the scenes protecting its Kubernetes clusters and maximizing application usage. In this series of 5 liveProjects, you’ll create user accounts to ensure Interpop is protected with authentication and authorization, and prevent bad actors from trying to access the application. You’ll implement different levels of access to Kubernetes, so that administrators can follow best practices of least privilege. Finally, you’ll patch Kubernetes to prepare for updates and avoid risky exposure.

In this series, you’ll leverage a feature in Kubernetes that optimizes where the application containers are run within, keeping the service running at the high level of efficiency Interpop’s customers expect. To boost developer productivity, you’ll streamline the process of creating storage on-the-fly. You’ll prevent loss of data (and user trust) by configuring and running a MySQL database and attaching persistent storage to it. You’ll ensure vital intra-pod communication using Weave, simplify traffic routing with the NGINX Ingress controller, and troubleshoot network problems in the cluster using kubectl. When you’re done, you’ll have gained skills that will help you ace the CKA exam and get you closer to a career in Kubernetes administration.

Disclaimer:

These practice exercises provide hands-on experience with the types of questions that you’ll see on the CKA exam, but shouldn’t be considered a complete preparation guide. Please see the book Acing the Certified Kubernetes Administrator Exam for complete preparation with more than 50 additional practice exercises.

As a Kubernetes administrator at Interpop, a music streaming service, you know that container applications can’t run without pod communication. Your task is to ensure connectivity between pods in the service’s cluster. You’ll connect nodes together using Weave, a container network interface (CNI). To keep communication traffic secure, you’ll implement network policies, and you’ll simplify traffic routing with the NGINX Ingress controller. You’ll learn how to troubleshoot network problems in the cluster using kubectl, and how to find solutions for pod failures. When you’re done, you’ll have experience implementing networking and troubleshooting techniques that will keep your container applications working together in harmony.

Interpop, a popular music-streaming service, wants its millions of customers across the globe to be able to view the same data—their user profiles and music playlists, for example—every time they open the service’s app. As Interpop’s new Kubernetes administrator, it’s up to you to prevent loss of data by setting up Interpop’s Kubernetes clusters to persist indefinitely. Using YAML, you’ll configure and create a persistent volume that allows for data to persist beyond the life of a pod (because pods are natively ephemeral). You’ll also create a persistent volume claim, ensuring that the app has enough storage to run efficiently. Using various storage allocation methods, you’ll streamline the process of creating storage on-the-fly, helping to boost Interpop’s developers’ productivity. To prepare for production, you’ll configure and run a MySQL database* and attach persistent storage to it. When you’re finished, you’ll have the skills and knowledge to prevent the loss of vital data, and Interpop will sing your praises!

*The approximate cost to run EKS in AWS Cloud is $4.33 USD.

You’re the new Kubernetes administrator at Interpop, a popular music streaming service that receives about a million requests per second. Your task is to help Interpop provide the high level of service that its customers expect by keeping its microservices running optimally. You’ll set resource requests and limits, ensuring enough CPU and RAM are available to ensure efficiency. You’ll “soup up” the app, preventing it from failing to run by using selectors and affinity for pod scheduling. Using Helm to install multiple Kubernetes resources at once, you’ll streamline the task of routing incoming requests to multiple Kubernetes services. When you’re done, you’ll be hitting a high note with your expertise in keeping Kubernetes services highly available and fault-tolerant.

At Interpop, a positive experience for users is priority number one. As a Kubernetes administrator for the music streaming service, you’re responsible for securing the Kubernetes platform where the streaming service runs and maximizing resource usage to provide a trustworthy, reliable, and performant system. You’ll change the cluster API configuration to allow access only to people and machines that require it. You’ll back up and restore the vital etcd datastore, minimizing potential downtime in the event of a disaster. To learn to identify errors caused by changes, you’ll make a change in the kube-system namespace and check the pod logs for any resulting problems. Then, with an eye to the future, you’ll patch Kubernetes by updating the control plane components via kubeadm, setting it up for bug fixes and new features. By the end, your Kubernetes cluster will be impenetrable, and that’s sure to be music to users’ ears.

Welcome to Interpop, a popular audio streaming service that has over 30 million users and gets about a million requests per second to its service running on Kubernetes. As Interpop’s new Kubernetes administrator, your task is to secure its Kubernetes cluster, ensuring a more secure connection for end users. You’ll create user accounts with client certificates that allow limited access to the cluster, and you’ll grant different levels of user access with Roles, Bindings, ClusterRoles, and ClusterBindings. You’ll create service accounts that allow users to deploy pods so that developers can run them, and you’ll empower Interpop’s engineers to check what kind of access they have using auth can-I. When you’re done, you’ll have practical experience securing access to Kubernetes with users, certs, groups, and role-based access control (RBAC), as well as a solid understanding of Kubernetes security in a production environment.

Acing the Certified Kubernetes Administrator Exam teaches every skill you need to pass the CKA. You can’t “hack” this exam by learning a few test-taking tricks. Instead, you’ll master vital techniques like load balancing and networking with carefully designed exercises that you practice using the CKA’s command-line interface. With this book, you’ll be confident and ready for exam day.