KCNA cheat sheet

Exam at a glance

Domain weightings

How much of the exam each domain covers. Spend your study time in proportion — the heavier the domain, the more questions you'll see.

Key terms

Kubernetes

Kubernetes is an open-source platform for automating the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. KCNA centers on Kubernetes fundamentals as its largest domain.

Pod

A Pod is the smallest deployable unit in Kubernetes, wrapping one or more containers that share storage and network. KCNA covers Pods among core Kubernetes resources.

Control plane

The control plane is the set of Kubernetes components — API server, scheduler, controller manager, and etcd — that manage the cluster's state. KCNA covers control-plane and node components in Kubernetes fundamentals.

Deployment

A Deployment is a Kubernetes resource that declaratively manages a replicated set of Pods and supports rolling updates. KCNA covers Deployments and ReplicaSets among workload resources.

Service

A Service is a Kubernetes resource that provides a stable network endpoint and load balancing for a set of Pods. KCNA covers Services within the Kubernetes networking model.

kubectl

kubectl is the command-line tool for interacting with the Kubernetes API to create, inspect, and manage cluster resources. KCNA covers kubectl and declarative YAML configuration.

Container runtime

A container runtime is the software that runs containers on a node, integrated with Kubernetes through the Container Runtime Interface (CRI). KCNA covers runtimes and the CRI in container orchestration.

Container Network Interface

The Container Network Interface (CNI) is a specification and set of plugins for configuring network connectivity for containers. KCNA covers the CNI within the Kubernetes networking model.

Container Storage Interface

The Container Storage Interface (CSI) is a standard for exposing storage systems to containerized workloads in Kubernetes. KCNA covers the CSI, volumes, and persistent volumes in the orchestration domain.

RBAC

RBAC (role-based access control) is the Kubernetes mechanism for granting permissions to users and workloads through roles and bindings. KCNA covers RBAC basics within cloud-native security.

Service mesh

A service mesh is an infrastructure layer that manages service-to-service communication, adding traffic control, security, and observability. KCNA covers service-mesh concepts in container orchestration.

GitOps

GitOps is a practice of managing infrastructure and application delivery declaratively through Git as the single source of truth. KCNA covers GitOps and tools such as Argo CD and Flux in application delivery.

Helm

Helm is a package manager for Kubernetes that bundles application resources into reusable, versioned charts. KCNA covers Helm for packaging and deploying applications.

Observability

Observability is the ability to understand a system's internal state from its outputs — metrics, logs, and traces. KCNA covers observability and tools such as Prometheus and OpenTelemetry in cloud-native architecture.

CNCF

The CNCF (Cloud Native Computing Foundation) is the open-source foundation that hosts Kubernetes and the broader cloud-native ecosystem. KCNA covers the CNCF landscape, project maturity, and community in cloud-native architecture.