☸️Skill assessment · 187 questions

Kubernetes skill assessment

How deep does your cluster knowledge really go?

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What it covers

Troubleshooting

Build a systematic approach to diagnosing failing pods and cluster issues. Fast, accurate debugging is what separates operators under pressure.

Reading kubectl describe eventsCrashLoopBackOff and ImagePullBackOff causesDebugging with ephemeral containersChecking resource limits and OOMKilledInspecting logs and previous container logs

Cluster Lifecycle

Install, upgrade, and protect production clusters. This is the operator's core job and a heavily weighted CKA domain.

kubeadm init/join and bootstrap tokensCluster version upgrades and node drain/cordonHighly-available control plane (stacked vs external etcd)etcd backup and restore (etcdctl snapshot)Certificate management and renewal

Cluster Extensions

Modern CKA topics: extend and package clusters with Helm, Kustomize, CRDs, operators, and the CNI/CSI/CRI interfaces.

Helm charts, releases, values, and repositoriesKustomize bases, overlays, and patchesCustomResourceDefinitions and custom resourcesThe operator pattern and custom controllersExtension interfaces: CNI, CSI, CRI

RBAC & Security

Grant least-privilege access with role-based access control. RBAC is allow-only and additive — there is no explicit deny.

Roles and ClusterRoles (apiGroups, resources, verbs)RoleBindings and ClusterRoleBindingsServiceAccounts and token projectionkubectl auth can-i and least privilegesecurityContext: runAsNonRoot, dropped capabilities

Services & Networking

Understand how pods communicate and how traffic enters the cluster. Kubernetes networking is essential for exposing and securing services.

Pod-to-Pod connectivity (flat network, no NAT)Services: ClusterIP, NodePort, LoadBalancer, endpointsGateway API and Ingress controllersCoreDNS and service discoveryNetworkPolicies for traffic control

Workloads

Master the controllers that run and manage pods so applications stay available and scale correctly. Choosing the right workload type is core to operating Kubernetes.

Deployments, ReplicaSets, and rolloutsStatefulSets and stable identitiesDaemonSets and per-node podsJobs and CronJobsLiveness, readiness, and startup probes

Scheduling

Understand how the scheduler places pods onto nodes and how to influence that placement. Scheduling controls density, isolation, and reliability.

Resource requests and limitsNode selectors and affinity/anti-affinityTaints and tolerationsTopology spread constraintsPriority, preemption, and QoS classes

Storage

Learn how persistent data is attached to ephemeral pods through volumes and claims. Storage knowledge is required for any stateful workload.

Volumes vs. PersistentVolumesPersistentVolumeClaims and bindingStorageClasses and dynamic provisioningAccess modes (RWO, ROX, RWX)Reclaim policies and volume lifecycle

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