Kubernetes
Certification Training.

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) owns the Certified Kubernetes Administrator, Certified Kubernetes Application Developer and Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist programs, and the Linux Foundation administers the exams and issues the certifications. Training Camp is an independent training company. Our classes are hands-on, lab-based boot camps built to the CNCF exam curriculum, and you register for the exam yourself on the Linux Foundation training site.

No. The exam is purchased separately from the Linux Foundation for $445, which includes one retake and a 12-month window in which to schedule it. The course price covers the live instruction, courseware, the hands-on lab environment, post-class mentoring and a free course retake within one year.

CKA, CKAD and CKS are all online, proctored, performance-based exams: two hours at a command line solving tasks on live clusters, with no multiple choice. The current exam environment runs Kubernetes v1.35. Each certification is valid for two years from the date you pass.

CKA is for the people who build and run clusters: kubeadm installs, etcd backup, upgrades, RBAC, networking, storage and troubleshooting. CKAD is for the people who deploy applications onto clusters someone else runs: Pods, Deployments, probes, ConfigMaps, Secrets, Jobs, Ingress, Helm and Kustomize. If your job title says administrator, platform or SRE, start with CKA. If it says developer or DevOps and you spend your day shipping workloads, start with CKAD. Many people eventually hold both.

Same exam, same curriculum, different pace. The five-day CKA and CKAD boot camps assume you are comfortable at a Linux command line and know what a container is, then build everything else from the ground up, with a mock exam at the end of the week. The three-day Fast Tracks are for people who already work in Kubernetes every day or have completed Kubernetes Fundamentals: shorter lectures, faster labs, timed practice tasks and a mock exam on the final day. If you are unsure, take the five-day class.

Yes. The CNCF requires an active CKA certification before you can sit the CKS exam, and the CKS boot camp assumes that level of cluster administration knowledge from the first morning. If you do not hold the CKA yet, take the CKA or CKA Fast Track boot camp first, pass the exam, then schedule CKS.

No. There is no Fundamentals exam. You finish with a Training Camp certificate of completion and a working knowledge of a real cluster you deployed yourself. It is the expected background for the CKA Fast Track and CKAD Fast Track boot camps, and a sensible first step before the five-day classes if you have never worked with container orchestration.

Every course on this page includes a free course retake within one year of your original class, along with post-class mentoring from an instructor while you prepare for the exam. Use it if you want a second pass through the labs before you schedule your exam attempt.

Live online with an instructor, in full-day sessions across two, three or five consecutive days depending on the course. Every student works in a hands-on lab environment on real clusters throughout the class. Any of these courses can also run privately for a team, online or at your site, using the same instructor and material.

They are not on the DoD 8140 Approved Qualifications Matrix as of this writing. Kubernetes skills are still in demand on federal cloud and platform teams, but if your role requires an 8140-listed credential, check the current Approved Qualifications Matrix before you enroll.