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Kubernetes and Cloud Native Associate (KCNA) Study Notes

Bastab C — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 10:54:25 +0000

I sat the Kubernetes and Cloud Native Associate (KCNA) and passed. KCNA is the entry-level CNCF certification - it covers Kubernetes fundamentals and the wider cloud native landscape at a conceptual level, and it is the natural first step before the hands-on CKA, CKAD, and CKS exams.

It is a multiple-choice exam, so it rewards knowing what the pieces are and how they relate, not hands-on kubectl skill. If you already work with Kubernetes, a lot of this will be familiar, so calibrate the prep to what you already know.

The exam at a glance


Questions	60
Time	90 minutes
Format	Multiple choice, online proctored
Passing score	75%
Cost	250 USD (two attempts included)
Validity	2 years

The pass mark is a flat 75%, not a scaled score, so the smaller domains still count - do not leave them to chance.

The four domains

KCNA has four domains. The percentages are the share of scored content, straight from the official curriculum - the bigger the share, the more of your study time it deserves. Note the curriculum was restructured: older guides reference a five-domain version, so calibrate against the current one below.

Kubernetes Fundamentals (44%)

By far the largest domain, and the core of the exam. The Kubernetes architecture, the main resources, and how you interact with a cluster. If you only have time for one area, this is it.

Focus areas:

Kubernetes architecture - control plane vs node components
Core resources - Pods, Deployments, ReplicaSets, Services, namespaces
Configuration - ConfigMaps and Secrets
kubectl basics and the API-driven, declarative model
Containers and the container runtime (CRI)

Container Orchestration (28%)

The second-largest domain. Why orchestration exists and how Kubernetes does it - scheduling, networking, storage, and security at a conceptual level.

Focus areas:

Scheduling and how Pods land on nodes
Networking model - Services, the CNI, Pod-to-Pod communication
Storage - volumes, persistent volumes, the CSI
Container security and the runtime ecosystem
Service mesh and the role it plays

Cloud Native Application Delivery (16%)

How cloud native software gets built and shipped. CI/CD, GitOps, and the packaging tools you would meet around Kubernetes.

Focus areas:

CI/CD fundamentals in a cloud native context
GitOps and declarative delivery
Packaging - Helm and templating
Application delivery patterns and rollout strategies

Cloud Native Architecture (12%)

The wider landscape around Kubernetes. Autoscaling, serverless, open standards, and the roles and personas in the cloud native world. Conceptual, breadth-first.

Focus areas:

Autoscaling - horizontal vs vertical, cluster autoscaling
Serverless and event-driven concepts
Open standards and the role of the CNCF
Observability concepts - metrics, logs, traces (Prometheus, OpenTelemetry)
Community, governance, and personas

Concepts to know well

For KCNA you need to recognise what each piece is and what it is for, not how to configure it:

Concept	Know this about it
Pod	Smallest deployable unit; one or more containers sharing network and storage
Deployment	Declarative rollouts and scaling of stateless Pods via ReplicaSets
Service	Stable networking endpoint for a set of Pods; ClusterIP, NodePort, LoadBalancer
kube-apiserver	The control plane front door; everything goes through the API
etcd	The cluster's key-value store of record
kubelet	Node agent that runs and reports on Pods
kube-scheduler	Decides which node a Pod runs on
ConfigMap / Secret	Non-sensitive vs sensitive configuration injected into Pods
CNI	Pluggable networking layer for Pod connectivity
Helm	Package manager for Kubernetes applications
Prometheus	The default cloud native metrics and monitoring project
kubectl	The CLI you use to talk to the API server

Easy things to mix up

These are the distinctions the exam likes to probe. Knowing the boundary between a pair is usually the whole question:

Deployment vs StatefulSet vs DaemonSet - Deployments for stateless replicas, StatefulSets for stable identity and storage, DaemonSets for one Pod per node.
Service types - ClusterIP is internal only, NodePort exposes a port on every node, LoadBalancer provisions an external load balancer.
ConfigMap vs Secret - both inject configuration, but Secrets are for sensitive data and are base64-encoded (not encrypted by default).
Liveness vs readiness vs startup probes - liveness restarts a stuck container, readiness gates traffic, startup protects slow-starting apps.
Requests vs limits - requests are what the scheduler reserves, limits are the hard ceiling the runtime enforces.
Labels vs annotations - labels are for selecting and grouping objects, annotations are for non-identifying metadata.
Control plane vs node components - api-server, scheduler, etcd, and controllers run the cluster; kubelet, kube-proxy, and the runtime run the workloads.
Container vs container runtime - the container is the running unit, the runtime (containerd, CRI-O) is what runs it via the CRI.

Resources

KCNA is conceptual, so a structured course plus practice questions covers most of it. You do not need to spend much.

Essential

KCNA Curriculum (CNCF) - the syllabus. The domains and their weights tell you exactly what is in scope.
LFS250: Kubernetes and Cloud Native Essentials - the Linux Foundation's own course, written to the KCNA curriculum. The closest thing to an official study path.
KodeKloud KCNA course - the most recommended third-party prep, with hands-on labs and practice questions. Pick this or LFS250 if you want one guided path.
A throwaway cluster to poke at - minikube, kind, or a free Killercoda sandbox - plus the kubectl Quick Reference. Even on a conceptual exam, touching the objects makes them stick.

Useful

The KCNA Sample Curriculum Path - the Linux Foundation's suggested learning order.

Skip if you are tight on time

Community write-ups like How to Ace the KCNA and Pass the KCNA Exam - good for orientation and a second pass over the topics, but they overlap with the course and curriculum. Pick one, skim the rest.

Notes

Verify the curriculum version. KCNA was restructured to four domains - plenty of older guides still teach the five-domain layout, and the weightings have shifted.

This is a breadth exam. Know what each piece is for and how the control plane and nodes fit together; do not go deep on any single object.

Even though it is multiple choice, a few hours with kubectl on a throwaway cluster makes the concepts far more concrete than reading.

The cloud native landscape questions reward knowing the flagship CNCF projects by what they do - Prometheus for metrics, Helm for packaging, etcd for state.

KCNA is the on-ramp to the hands-on CNCF exams. If CKA or CKAD is next, treat this as the groundwork for them.

AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) Study Notes

Bastab C — Fri, 19 Jun 2026 13:17:30 +0000

I sat the AWS Certified Cloud Practitioner (CLF-C02) back in 2024 and passed. CLF-C02 is AWS's foundational certification - broad rather than deep, covering cloud concepts, security, core services, and billing at a level anyone working around AWS should recognise.

It is the most accessible AWS exam, so if you already work with AWS day to day, a lot of this will be familiar. Treat it as a breadth check rather than a deep technical exam, and calibrate the prep to what you already know.

The exam at a glance


Questions	65 (50 scored, 15 unscored)
Time	90 minutes
Format	Multiple choice and multiple response
Passing score	700 out of 1000 (scaled)
Cost	100 USD
Validity	3 years

The score is scaled, so you do not need 70% of questions right - it is normalised across question difficulty. The exam is conceptual: it tests whether you understand what AWS services do and when they apply, not whether you can build with them.

The four domains

CLF-C02 has four domains. The percentages are the share of scored content, straight from the exam guide - the bigger the share, the more of your study time it deserves.

Domain 1 - Cloud Concepts (24%)

The "why cloud" domain. Value proposition of the cloud, the AWS global infrastructure, and the basics of how cloud economics differ from running your own hardware. Conceptual, not technical.

Focus areas:

Benefits of cloud - elasticity, agility, pay-as-you-go, economies of scale
AWS global infrastructure - Regions, Availability Zones, edge locations
Cloud economics - CapEx vs OpEx, total cost of ownership
The AWS Well-Architected Framework at a high level
Migration and the cloud adoption basics

Domain 2 - Security and Compliance (30%)

The second-largest domain. The shared responsibility model is the spine of it - know exactly where AWS's responsibility ends and yours begins. The rest is IAM basics and where to find compliance information.

Focus areas:

Shared responsibility model - what AWS secures vs what you secure
IAM - users, groups, roles, policies, MFA, root account protection
Security services - Shield, WAF, GuardDuty, Inspector, KMS at a high level
Compliance - AWS Artifact, where audit reports come from
Encryption in transit and at rest as concepts

Domain 3 - Cloud Technology and Services (34%)

The largest domain and the widest. You need recognition-level knowledge of a long list of services - what each one is for, not how to configure it. Breadth beats depth here.

Focus areas:

Compute - EC2, Lambda, Elastic Beanstalk, ECS/EKS at a glance
Storage - S3, EBS, EFS, Glacier and when each fits
Databases - RDS, DynamoDB, Aurora, ElastiCache at a glance
Networking - VPC, Route 53, CloudFront, the basics
Management and monitoring - CloudWatch, CloudTrail, Organizations, Trusted Advisor
Ways to access AWS - console, CLI, SDKs, infrastructure as code

Domain 4 - Billing, Pricing, and Support (12%)

The smallest domain, but easy marks if you know the tools. Pricing models, the billing and cost tools, and the support plan tiers. Worth a focused hour - the distinctions are clean and frequently tested.

Focus areas:

Pricing models - On-Demand, Reserved, Spot, Savings Plans
Cost tools - Cost Explorer, Budgets, Cost and Usage Report, Billing Conductor
Support plans - Basic, Developer, Business, Enterprise and what each includes
AWS Organizations and consolidated billing
Trusted Advisor cost checks

Services to know well

For CLF-C02 you need recognition-level knowledge - what each service is for and when you would reach for it, not how to configure it:

Service	Know this about it
EC2	Virtual servers; the pricing models attach here
S3	Object storage, storage classes, durability
RDS	Managed relational databases vs running your own
Lambda	Serverless compute, pay per execution
VPC	Your private network boundary in AWS
IAM	Users, groups, roles, policies, MFA
CloudWatch	Monitoring, metrics, alarms, logs
CloudTrail	API activity auditing (who did what)
Organizations	Multi-account management, consolidated billing
Trusted Advisor	Best-practice checks across cost, security, performance
Cost Explorer / Budgets	Viewing spend vs alerting on spend
Well-Architected Tool	Reviewing workloads against the six pillars

Easy things to mix up

These are the distinctions the exam likes to probe. At this level, knowing the boundary between a pair is usually the whole question:

Shared responsibility model - AWS secures the cloud (hardware, global infrastructure); you secure what you put in it (data, IAM, configuration). Managed services shift more onto AWS.
Regions vs Availability Zones vs edge locations - a Region is a geographic area, an AZ is one or more data centres within it, an edge location serves CloudFront content closer to users.
Security groups vs network ACLs - security groups are stateful and act at the instance; NACLs are stateless and act at the subnet.
On-Demand vs Reserved vs Spot - On-Demand for flexibility, Reserved/Savings Plans for steady long-term workloads at a discount, Spot for interruptible workloads at the biggest discount.
Cost Explorer vs Budgets vs Cost and Usage Report - Explorer visualises past spend, Budgets alerts on thresholds, the CUR is the detailed line-item export.
IAM users vs roles - users are long-lived identities, roles are assumed temporarily and avoid long-lived credentials.
Support plans - Basic is free, Developer adds business-hours email support, Business adds 24/7 and a fuller Trusted Advisor, Enterprise adds a TAM.
Trusted Advisor vs Well-Architected Tool - Trusted Advisor runs automated best-practice checks; the Well-Architected Tool is a guided self-review against the framework.

Resources

CLF-C02 is well served by free, AWS-authored material. You do not need to spend much here.

Essential

Exam Guide (CLF-C02) - the syllabus. The domain breakdown and in-scope service list tell you exactly what is fair game.
Exam Prep Enhanced Course (Skill Builder) - AWS's own guided prep, free, and enough to carry most people through on its own.
Official Practice Exam (Skill Builder) - calibrate against AWS-authored questions before booking.

Useful

Exam Prep Standard Course (Skill Builder) - a lighter path than the enhanced course if you only need a refresher.
DigitalCloud cheat sheets - good for last-week revision once the concepts are in place.

Skip if you are tight on time

DigitalCloud resources page is handy as references, but they overlap with the official course and your practice exams. Skim, do not study cover to cover.

Notes

This is a breadth exam. Recognising what a service is for matters far more than any configuration detail - do not over-study any single service.

The free Skill Builder enhanced course plus one set of practice exams is enough for most people. There is no need to buy multiple courses.

Learn the shared responsibility model and the support plan tiers cold - they are reliable marks and the distinctions are clean.

The score is scaled, so aim to clear 700 comfortably on practice exams rather than chasing a specific number.