Free Online Course · Self-paced

CKA Tutorial: Certified Kubernetes Administrator Course

Free CKA tutorial aligned to the official Kubernetes administrator curriculum — kubeadm lab setup, five weighted competencies, and hands-on cluster administration lessons on Linux.

  • 65 parts
  • ~857 min total
  • Intermediate to Advanced
  • Updated Jul 2026
Reviewed Deepak Prasad
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CKA Tutorial: Certified Kubernetes Administrator Course
By Last updated

This syllabus tracks the official CKA curriculum. You start with foundation and lab setup, then work through five weighted competency areas for cluster installation, operation, and troubleshooting. Each lesson links to a hands-on tutorial you can repeat on your own VMs.

Open Before You Begin first if you still need a cluster and workstation kubectl. The walkthroughs below use a multi-node kubeadm cluster with one control-plane node and two workers. The syllabus chapters follow a learning path—cluster setup and workloads before storage and troubleshooting—not the accordion order on the Linux Foundation marketing page.

For topics outside the CKA blueprint, browse the wider Kubernetes tutorial.

What the CKA exam expects

The competency bullets below come from the current CKA blueprint, grouped by exam weight.

Storage (10%)

  • Implement storage classes and dynamic volume provisioning
  • Configure volume types, access modes and reclaim policies
  • Manage persistent volumes and persistent volume claims

Troubleshooting (30%)

  • Troubleshoot clusters and nodes
  • Troubleshoot cluster components
  • Monitor cluster and application resource usage
  • Manage and evaluate container output streams
  • Troubleshoot services and networking

Workloads & Scheduling (15%)

  • Understand application deployments and how to perform rolling update and rollbacks
  • Use ConfigMaps and Secrets to configure applications
  • Configure workload autoscaling
  • Understand the primitives used to create robust, self-healing, application deployments
  • Configure Pod admission and scheduling (limits, node affinity, etc.)

Cluster Architecture, Installation & Configuration (25%)

  • Manage role based access control (RBAC)
  • Prepare underlying infrastructure for installing a Kubernetes cluster
  • Create and manage Kubernetes clusters using kubeadm
  • Manage the lifecycle of Kubernetes clusters
  • Implement and configure a highly-available control plane
  • Use Helm and Kustomize to install cluster components
  • Understand extension interfaces (CNI, CSI, CRI, etc.)
  • Understand CRDs, install and configure operators

Services & Networking (20%)

  • Understand connectivity between Pods
  • Define and enforce Network Policies
  • Use ClusterIP, NodePort, LoadBalancer service types and endpoints
  • Use the Gateway API to manage Ingress traffic
  • Know how to use Ingress controllers and Ingress resources
  • Understand and use CoreDNS

Troubleshooting is the highest-weight domain on the exam. Work through the application failure articles first, then node and control-plane lessons once your multi-node lab is stable.

Use Start the course to open Before You Begin, or jump straight to any competency in the syllabus.

What you'll learn

  • Install and upgrade multi-node Kubernetes clusters with kubeadm, containerd, and a CNI plugin
  • Operate HA control planes, etcd backup/restore, node lifecycle, cordon, and drain workflows
  • Schedule workloads with taints, affinity, HPA, and PodDisruptionBudgets
  • Provision storage with PV, PVC, StorageClass, and dynamic provisioning
  • Administer Services, Ingress, Gateway API, CoreDNS, and NetworkPolicy
  • Troubleshoot nodes, control-plane components, Pods, and application networking

Prerequisites

  • Comfortable Linux command line, systemd, and basic networking (ports, DNS, routing)
  • Familiarity with containers and YAML manifests
  • A workstation with 16 GB RAM recommended for a three-node kubeadm lab (one control-plane + two workers), or SSH access to an existing cluster
  • Willingness to work on control-plane nodes for etcd, PKI, and upgrade tasks

Syllabus

6 chapters · 65 lessons · ~857 min of reading

  1. 1 Before You Begin — Foundation and Lab Setup 9 lessons
    1. Part 1 Install Kubernetes with kubeadm (multi-node cluster) 25 min read
    2. Part 2 Install kubectl and configure kubeconfig 14 min read
    3. Part 3 kubectl commands and YAML examples 14 min read
    4. Part 4 Kubernetes architecture and control plane components 14 min read
    5. Part 5 Kubernetes namespaces with kubectl examples 11 min read
    6. Part 6 Labels and selectors 22 min read
    7. Part 7 Kubernetes annotations 8 min read
    8. Part 8 Labels vs annotations 7 min read
    9. Part 9 API resources and kubectl explain 11 min read
  2. 2 Cluster Architecture, Installation & Configuration — 25% 14 lessons
    1. Part 10 CNI, CSI, and CRI interfaces 15 min read
    2. Part 11 Add, remove, reset, and rejoin cluster nodes 15 min read
    3. Part 12 Cordon, drain, and uncordon nodes 13 min read
    4. Part 13 Highly available control plane with kubeadm 15 min read
    5. Part 14 Back up and restore etcd 14 min read
    6. Part 15 PKI, kubeconfig users, CSR, and certificate renewal 16 min read
    7. Part 16 Upgrade a Kubernetes cluster with kubeadm 26 min read
    8. Part 17 Kubernetes RBAC with examples 9 min read
    9. Part 18 Authentication, authorization, and admission control 10 min read
    10. Part 19 Kubernetes ServiceAccounts with examples 10 min read
    11. Part 20 Deploy cluster components with Helm 11 min read
    12. Part 21 Kustomize: bases, overlays, and patches 12 min read
    13. Part 22 CRDs and custom resources 14 min read
    14. Part 23 Install and configure a Kubernetes Operator 13 min read
  3. 3 Workloads & Scheduling — 15% 16 lessons
    1. Part 24 Kubernetes Pods and Pod lifecycle 15 min read
    2. Part 25 Deployments, rolling updates, and rollbacks 14 min read
    3. Part 26 Kubernetes StatefulSet with examples 12 min read
    4. Part 27 Kubernetes DaemonSet with examples 15 min read
    5. Part 28 Kubernetes Jobs with examples 11 min read
    6. Part 29 Kubernetes CronJobs with examples 10 min read
    7. Part 30 Liveness, readiness, and startup probes 10 min read
    8. Part 31 Kubernetes ConfigMap with examples 12 min read
    9. Part 32 Kubernetes Secrets with examples 10 min read
    10. Part 33 Requests, limits, and QoS classes 14 min read
    11. Part 34 ResourceQuota and LimitRange 12 min read
    12. Part 35 Taints and tolerations 14 min read
    13. Part 36 Scheduling, nodeSelector, and affinity 17 min read
    14. Part 37 Horizontal Pod Autoscaler 10 min read
    15. Part 38 PodDisruptionBudget 16 min read
    16. Part 39 Static Pods and mirror Pods 14 min read
  4. 4 Storage — 10% 5 lessons
    1. Part 40 Kubernetes volumes with practical examples 9 min read
    2. Part 41 PersistentVolume and PVC 14 min read
    3. Part 42 StorageClass and dynamic provisioning 10 min read
    4. Part 43 subPath volume mounts 9 min read
    5. Part 44 Fix Pending PVC and volume mount errors 14 min read
  5. 5 Services & Networking — 20% 9 lessons
    1. Part 45 Networking model, CNI, and kube-proxy 11 min read
    2. Part 46 Services, Endpoints, and EndpointSlices 15 min read
    3. Part 47 Troubleshoot a Service that is not working 14 min read
    4. Part 48 DNS, CoreDNS, and name resolution 17 min read
    5. Part 49 NetworkPolicy with examples 20 min read
    6. Part 50 Ingress rules with host, path, and TLS examples 15 min read
    7. Part 51 Gateway API with HTTPRoute examples 14 min read
    8. Part 52 kubectl port-forward with Pods, Deployments, and Services 9 min read
    9. Part 53 Fix FailedCreatePodSandBox and CNI errors 12 min read
  6. 6 Troubleshooting — 30% 12 lessons
    1. Part 54 Monitor resources with kubectl top 11 min read
    2. Part 55 kubectl logs, Events, and describe 17 min read
    3. Part 56 Debug Pods with kubectl exec and kubectl debug 8 min read
    4. Part 57 Kubernetes Pod troubleshooting workflow 11 min read
    5. Part 58 Fix CrashLoopBackOff 16 min read
    6. Part 59 Fix ImagePullBackOff and ErrImagePull 13 min read
    7. Part 60 Fix Pending and ContainerCreating Pods 13 min read
    8. Part 61 Fix OOMKilled and exit code 137 21 min read
    9. Part 62 Delete a stuck or Terminating Pod 11 min read
    10. Part 63 Fix Deployment not creating Pods 10 min read
    11. Part 64 Fix Node NotReady and kubelet errors 10 min read
    12. Part 65 Troubleshoot control plane components 8 min read
Deepak Prasad

R&D Engineer

Founder of GoLinuxCloud with more than 15 years of expertise in Linux, Python, Go, Laravel, DevOps, Kubernetes, Git, Shell scripting, OpenShift, AWS, Networking, and Security. With extensive experience, he excels across development, DevOps, networking, and security, delivering robust and efficient solutions for diverse projects.

Expertise
  • Go (programming language)
  • Python (programming language)
  • DevOps
  • Computer Security
  • Cloud Computing
  • Kubernetes
  • Linux
  • Ansible (software)