Why Certify?

• Systemic holistic path to learning the topic at hand, different certs target different levels or areas of learning. in general, each cert provides a broad base of specific knowledge.

• Required by employer e.g. Vendor requires a number of certified professionals to become a reseller, consultant, or training partner e.g. KCSP, KCTP

• A start to build some kind of experience, but not enough by itself

• Could add some sort of credibility that you have done the required work, and gone through the necessary data points

• Some companies do give it value in the current competitive job market.

• Proves your self-learning initiatives

4 reasons to get kubernetes certified and 4 reasons not to

Alternatives to certifications would be experience, contribution to projects, informative content creation and community collaborations.

What are the freely available paths to cloud-native certifications?

Cloud service providers

CIVO

civo.com/academy

VMware

kube.academy

Amazon Web Services AWS

Google Cloud GCP

cloudskillsboost.google used to be qwiklabs

IBM

developer.ibm.com/series/kubernetes-learnin..

Cloud-native vendors

Kasten

learning.kasten.io

Styra:

academy.styra.com

SUSE: SUSE and Rancher community ( used to be called Rancher Acadamy)

community.suse.com/posts/rancher-operator-l..

Ambassador Labs

Tigera

academy.tigera.io/courses

Solo

• Understanding Istio’s data plane and implementing an ingress gateway (Envoy Proxy)
• Installing Istio with day-2 operations in mind
• Iteratively introducing Istio in your organization
• How to connect observability systems (Prometheus and Grafana)
• Adding Kubernetes services while avoiding common mistakes
• Implementing service-to-service encryption with mTLS
• Debugging networking configurations and other Istio configuration settings when things go wrong

solo.io/blog/get-certified-on-the-essential..

Tetrate

academy.tetrate.io/courses/certified-istio-..

Sumologic:

Swiftly navigate through Kubernetes cluster name spaces, services, nodes, and deployments and master monitoring and troubleshooting Kubernetes from alerts and dashboards to customized templates to address key use cases. This certification is valid for 1 year.

sumologic.com/learn/advanced-metrics-kubern..

Gremlin:

Demonstrate your Reliability expertise, increase your visibility, and advance your career with a Gremlin certification.

gremlin.com/certification

Other platforms

Edx

Coursera

Cloud-native foundation/Linux foundation certifications path:

KCNA

Andrew's Brown free freecodecamp course

youtu.be/AplluksKvzI

Udemy practice questions

udemy.com/course/kubernetes-and-cloud-nativ..

Github

• github.com/walidshaari/Kubernetes-and-Cloud..
• github.com/moabukar/Kubernetes-and-Cloud-Na..

CKAD

acloudguru/pulralsight

Killer.sh and killercoda

killercoda.com/killer-shell-ckad

CKA

acloudguru/pulralsight

Killer.sh and killercoda

killercoda.com/killer-shell-cka

PCA

training.linuxfoundation.org/certification/..

A new associate certification exam from CNCF and The Linux Foundation will test foundational knowledge and skills using Prometheus, the open-source systems monitoring and alerting toolkit

github.com/walidshaari/PrometheusCertifiedA..

CKS

Udemy:

• Mumshad kodekloud.com/courses/certified-kubernetes-..
• Kim Wüstkamp udemy.com/topic/certified-kubernetes-securi..
• Zeal Vora udemy.com/course/certified-kubernetes-secur..

github.com/walidshaari/Certified-Kubernetes.. saiyampathak.gumroad.com/l/cksbook katacoda.com/walidshaari/courses/cks-challe..

Non-individual certs

KCSP

KCTP

CNF

cncf.io/certification/cnf

What's next?

learn and share your knowledge

Rich content in social media:

• Blogs e.g. medium, hashnode, dev.to
• videos: youtube channels: TGIK8s, CNCF, Red Hat, freecodecamp, ..etc
• Github repos:

CNCF Github projects contributions

Non code contributions e.g. Documentation, logistics, process, organizations

• cncf-contribute.netlify.app/contributors
• github.com/cncf/tag-contributor-strategy
• Forrest Brazeal’s cloudresumechallenge.dev/book