About the KCNA exam

As you might remember from Chapter 2, KCNA is an entry-level exam offered by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), followed by much harder Certified Kubernetes Administrator/Certified Kubernetes Administrator Developer (CKA/CKAD) and Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS) certifications. Despite being a theoretical, multi-choice exam, KCNA assumes basic knowledge of kubectl commands, Kubernetes resources, architecture, and features. Almost half (46%) of the exam is about Kubernetes, and it is not recommended to attempt the exam if you have not done any hands-on exercises from this book or if you have zero prior K8s experience.

Unlike CKA, CKAD, and CKS, KCNA is broader and tests other domains and competencies, including Cloud Native and microservice architectures, continuous integration/continuous deployment (CI/CD), observability, and more. However, even without any practical experience with Prometheus, Jaeger, Argo CD, or Helm, you’ll...