Question 1

Does KCNA have labs, and can I practise them without a cluster?

Accepted Answer

Yes. ExamIT Lab gives you 36 guided KCNA labs in a simulated Kubernetes cluster terminal. Nothing runs on a real cluster, cloud account or machine, so there is nothing to install, nothing to pay a cloud provider for, and nothing you can break.

Question 2

Are the KCNA labs free?

Accepted Answer

The first 5 labs in the learning order are free, repeatable and never expire — no credit card and no sign-up required to start. The full course of 36 labs plus 4 troubleshooting challenges is a one-time purchase with no subscription.

Question 3

What does a KCNA lab look like?

Accepted Answer

Each lab opens a realistic simulation of a simulated Kubernetes cluster (one control-plane node, two workers) driven from a terminal with kubectl, helm and git — cluster tour, Pods, Deployments, Services and DNS, ConfigMaps and Secrets, scheduling, taints and resource limits, container images and runtimes, probes, Ingress and Gateway API, NetworkPolicy, RBAC, Pod Security, storage and StatefulSets, Helm, Kustomize, GitOps, CI/CD, debugging, PromQL, logs and traces, autoscaling and extending Kubernetes, and the cloud native ecosystem. You get a task brief, a guided or independent mode, progressive hints and a "Check configuration" button that grades the actual end state you left behind — not just the buttons you clicked.

Question 4

Is this a real Kubernetes cluster?

Accepted Answer

No. It is a teaching simulator that reproduces the documented behaviour of kubectl, the API server, scheduler, kubelet and controllers, and a simplified model of tools such as Helm, Prometheus, service meshes, policy engines and GitOps controllers. Command output follows the official documentation where it was checked, and a few formats are approximations. A passing result here is practice, not proof that something works on a real cluster.

Question 5

Is this affiliated with the Linux Foundation or the CNCF?

Accepted Answer

No. ExamIT Lab is independent. KCNA is used only as the descriptive name of the exam these labs help you prepare for; the labs are original practice material and are not endorsed or sponsored by the Linux Foundation or the CNCF.

Question 6

Do the labs cover the current KCNA exam outline?

Accepted Answer

The labs are mapped to the four domains of the published KCNA curriculum (the CNCF curriculum repository, version of 2025-11-24), and we re-audit the mapping when it changes. KCNA is a multiple-choice exam, so the labs build the hands-on understanding behind the questions; combine them with the KCNA practice test on ExamIT Lab.

Question 7

Is there a certificate at the end?

Accepted Answer

Yes. When all 36 labs are complete you can issue a certificate of completion in your account: a PDF with your name and a unique ID, an Add to LinkedIn link and a public verification page. Before issuing, the server re-runs the course grader on every lab you saved, so it reflects work you really did. It certifies completion of this course; it is independent training, not an official certification.

Question 8

How is this different from running a local cluster such as kind or minikube?

Accepted Answer

A local cluster gives you an empty environment and no feedback. These labs give you a pre-built cluster with fictional apps, a clear goal for each task, hints when you want them and automatic checking of the cluster state and files you leave behind — so you practise the workflows the exam topics describe, in minutes, with nothing to install.

KCNA Hands-on Labs — practise in a simulated Kubernetes cluster terminal

Access options

Practice exam only

KCNA Hands-on Labs

KCNA Practice Exam + Hands-on Labs

Finish the course. Prove it.

Container Orchestration Fundamentals

Your learning path

Tour the cluster: nodes, namespaces, system Pods, API

Create and inspect a Pod

Deployments: scale, update, roll back

Expose it: Services, endpoints and curl by DNS name

Configure an app with a ConfigMap and a Secret

Labels, selectors and ownership

Namespaces, kubeconfig and contexts

Declarative vs imperative: apply, diff, dry-run, delete

Control plane anatomy: static Pods, kubeadm and etcd backup

Node maintenance: cordon, drain, PodDisruptionBudget

DaemonSet, Job, CronJob: pick the right controller

Health probes, init containers and sidecars

Scheduling by label: nodeSelector and node affinity

Taints and tolerations

Requests, limits, LimitRange and ResourceQuota

Images and containers: Dockerfile, layers, OCI, pull policy

Container runtimes and the CRI on a node

Cluster DNS and CoreDNS

Route traffic in: Ingress and Gateway API

NetworkPolicy: default deny and allow rules (and a Cilium policy)

Service mesh in practice: sidecar injection, mTLS, Envoy config

RBAC and ServiceAccounts: least privilege

Pod Security: Pod Security Admission and securityContext

Policy as code and runtime security: Kyverno, Gatekeeper, Falco rules

Persistent storage: PV, PVC, StorageClass, reclaim policy

StatefulSet with volumeClaimTemplates: data outlives the Pod

Helm as a user: repo, install, upgrade, rollback

Helm as an author: chart layout, values, lint, template

Kustomize: base and overlays

GitOps: fix an Argo CD Application and a Flux Kustomization

CI/CD and release strategies: git workflow, Tekton pipeline, canary

Debug a running Pod: logs, exec, port-forward, kubectl debug

Observability 1: query Prometheus with PromQL

Observability 2: logs, traces, metrics pipeline and the OpenTelemetry Collector

Scale and extend: HPA, KEDA, Knative, CRDs and operators

The CNCF ecosystem and community: maturity, TOC, SIGs, conduct

Troubleshooting challenges

Challenge: CrashLoopBackOff in the shop namespace

Challenge: ImagePullBackOff and a Pending Pod

Challenge: Service with no endpoints and a failing probe

Challenge: Forbidden, the RBAC outage

KCNA hands-on labs — questions