Free Online Course · Self-paced

CKAD Tutorial: Certified Kubernetes Application Developer Course

Free CKAD tutorial aligned to the official Kubernetes application developer curriculum — foundation lab setup, five weighted competencies, and hands-on lessons on any Linux workstation with kubectl.

  • 65 parts
  • ~819 min total
  • Intermediate
  • Updated Jul 2026
Reviewed Deepak Prasad
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CKAD Tutorial: Certified Kubernetes Application Developer Course
By Last updated

This syllabus tracks the official CKAD curriculum. You start with foundation and lab setup, work through five weighted competency areas, and finish with exam preparation at the end. Each lesson links to a hands-on tutorial you can run on your own cluster.

Open Before You Begin first if you still need a cluster and workstation kubectl. Most walkthroughs use a multi-node kubeadm cluster with two or three Linux VMs. If VMs are tight, Minikube is enough for quick YAML practice. For topics outside the CKAD blueprint, browse the wider Kubernetes tutorial.

After you finish the competency lessons, work through CKAD Exam Preparation: practice tasks by exam domain and keep the command cheat sheet open while you practise.

What the CKAD exam expects

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

Application Design and Build (20%)

  • Define, build and modify container images
  • Choose and use the right workload resource (Deployment, DaemonSet, CronJob, etc.)
  • Understand multi-container Pod design patterns (e.g. sidecar, init and others)
  • Utilize persistent and ephemeral volumes

Application Deployment (20%)

  • Use Kubernetes primitives to implement common deployment strategies (e.g. blue/green or canary)
  • Understand Deployments and how to perform rolling updates
  • Use the Helm package manager to deploy existing packages
  • Kustomize

Application Observability and Maintenance (15%)

  • Understand API deprecations
  • Implement probes and health checks
  • Use built-in CLI tools to monitor Kubernetes applications
  • Utilize container logs
  • Debugging in Kubernetes

Application Environment, Configuration and Security (25%)

  • Discover and use resources that extend Kubernetes (CRD, Operators)
  • Understand authentication, authorization and admission control
  • Understand requests, limits, quotas
  • Understand ConfigMaps
  • Define resource requirements
  • Create & consume Secrets
  • Understand ServiceAccounts
  • Understand Application Security (SecurityContexts, Capabilities, etc.)

Services and Networking (20%)

  • Demonstrate basic understanding of NetworkPolicies
  • Provide and troubleshoot access to applications via services
  • Use Ingress rules to expose applications

The troubleshooting lessons under Application Observability walk through specific failure modes: CrashLoopBackOff, ImagePullBackOff, Pending Pods, and similar. Building Operators from scratch is outside the CKAD scope; if that interests you, follow the Kubernetes Operator tutorial.

CKAD exam preparation

These resources are not part of the official exam blueprint. They sit after the five competency sections in the syllabus.

  1. CKAD practice tasks by exam domain — twenty-five scenarios grouped by competency with hints and worked solutions.
  2. CKAD command cheat sheet — kubectl shortcuts for dry-run YAML, rollouts, JSONPath, Helm, and troubleshooting while you practise.

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

What you'll learn

  • Build, tag, and pull container images; deploy workloads with Deployments, StatefulSets, DaemonSets, Jobs, and CronJobs
  • Roll out applications with rolling updates, blue-green and canary patterns, Helm, and Kustomize
  • Debug Pods with logs, events, describe, probes, kubectl top, exec, and kubectl debug
  • Configure ConfigMaps, Secrets, resource requests and limits, ServiceAccounts, RBAC, and SecurityContext
  • Expose and troubleshoot Services, Ingress, DNS, port-forward, and NetworkPolicy
  • Work with CRDs and installed Operators from an application developer perspective
  • Rehearse exam skills with domain practice labs and a kubectl command cheat sheet

Prerequisites

  • Comfortable Linux command line and basic networking (ports, DNS, HTTP)
  • Familiarity with containers — build, tag, and run images locally
  • A workstation with 8 GB RAM minimum (16 GB recommended) for a multi-node kubeadm lab, or a cloud cluster with kubectl access
  • Basic YAML — you will write Pod, Deployment, and Service manifests throughout the course

Syllabus

7 chapters · 65 lessons · ~819 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 namespaces with kubectl examples 11 min read
    5. Part 5 Labels and selectors 22 min read
    6. Part 6 Kubernetes annotations 8 min read
    7. Part 7 Labels vs annotations 7 min read
    8. Part 8 Taints and tolerations 14 min read
    9. Part 9 API resources and kubectl explain 11 min read
  2. 2 Application Design and Build — 20% 18 lessons
    1. Part 10 Build, tag, and push container images 18 min read
    2. Part 11 Private registries and imagePullSecrets 12 min read
    3. Part 12 Choose a Kubernetes workload resource 11 min read
    4. Part 13 Kubernetes Pods and Pod lifecycle 15 min read
    5. Part 14 Pod vs Deployment 9 min read
    6. Part 15 Kubernetes ReplicaSet with examples 11 min read
    7. Part 16 Kubernetes StatefulSet with examples 12 min read
    8. Part 17 Deployment vs StatefulSet 8 min read
    9. Part 18 Kubernetes DaemonSet with examples 15 min read
    10. Part 19 Deployment vs DaemonSet 7 min read
    11. Part 20 Init containers with examples 10 min read
    12. Part 21 Sidecar and multi-container patterns 11 min read
    13. Part 22 Kubernetes Jobs with examples 11 min read
    14. Part 23 Kubernetes CronJobs with examples 10 min read
    15. Part 24 Job vs CronJob 7 min read
    16. Part 25 Kubernetes volumes with practical examples 9 min read
    17. Part 26 subPath volume mounts 9 min read
    18. Part 27 PersistentVolume and PVC 14 min read
  3. 3 Application Deployment — 20% 5 lessons
    1. Part 28 Deployments, rolling updates, and rollbacks 14 min read
    2. Part 29 Blue-green and canary deployments 11 min read
    3. Part 30 Deploy applications with Helm 11 min read
    4. Part 31 Kustomize: bases, overlays, and patches 12 min read
    5. Part 32 Manage resources with apply, edit, patch, and replace 10 min read
  4. 4 Application Observability and Maintenance — 15% 12 lessons
    1. Part 33 API deprecations and manifest migration 10 min read
    2. Part 34 Liveness, readiness, and startup probes 10 min read
    3. Part 35 kubectl logs, Events, and describe 17 min read
    4. Part 36 Monitor resources with kubectl top 11 min read
    5. Part 37 Kubernetes Pod troubleshooting workflow 11 min read
    6. Part 38 Debug Pods with kubectl exec and kubectl debug 8 min read
    7. Part 39 Fix CrashLoopBackOff 16 min read
    8. Part 40 Fix ImagePullBackOff and ErrImagePull 13 min read
    9. Part 41 Fix Pending and ContainerCreating Pods 13 min read
    10. Part 42 Fix OOMKilled and exit code 137 21 min read
    11. Part 43 Delete a stuck or Terminating Pod 11 min read
    12. Part 44 Fix Deployment not creating Pods 10 min read
  5. 5 Application Environment, Configuration and Security — 25% 13 lessons
    1. Part 45 Kubernetes ConfigMap with examples 12 min read
    2. Part 46 How ConfigMap and Secret updates reach running Pods 10 min read
    3. Part 47 Kubernetes Secrets with examples 10 min read
    4. Part 48 Commands, args, environment variables, and Downward API 14 min read
    5. Part 49 Requests, limits, and QoS classes 14 min read
    6. Part 50 ResourceQuota and LimitRange 12 min read
    7. Part 51 Authentication, authorization, and admission control 10 min read
    8. Part 52 Kubernetes ServiceAccounts with examples 10 min read
    9. Part 53 Kubernetes RBAC with examples 9 min read
    10. Part 54 SecurityContext with practical examples 11 min read
    11. Part 55 Linux capabilities in Kubernetes 9 min read
    12. Part 56 CRDs and custom resources 14 min read
    13. Part 57 Kubernetes Operators explained 13 min read
  6. 6 Services and Networking — 20% 6 lessons
    1. Part 58 Services, Endpoints, and EndpointSlices 15 min read
    2. Part 59 Service DNS and name resolution 17 min read
    3. Part 60 Troubleshoot a Service that is not working 14 min read
    4. Part 61 kubectl port-forward with Pods, Deployments, and Services 9 min read
    5. Part 62 Ingress rules with host, path, and TLS examples 15 min read
    6. Part 63 NetworkPolicy with examples 20 min read
  7. 7 CKAD Exam Preparation 2 lessons
    1. Part 64 CKAD practice tasks by exam domain 32 min read
    2. Part 65 CKAD command cheat sheet 15 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)