What you'll learn

Building a Kubernetes cluster is just the beginning; keeping it running through upgrades, failures, and evolving tooling is where CKA-level skills are tested. In this course, Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA): Managing Cluster Lifecycle and Upgrades, you'll gain the ability to maintain, upgrade, and extend Kubernetes clusters using the tools and workflows the exam demands. First, you'll explore etcd backup and restore, the single most-tested task on the CKA exam, including the certificate flags, snapshot commands, and restore workflow that must become muscle memory. You'll also examine highly-available control plane topologies and understand how stacked etcd and external etcd architectures affect your disaster recovery strategy. Next, you'll discover the kubeadm upgrade workflow from start to finish: running kubeadm upgrade plan, upgrading the control plane, draining and upgrading worker nodes, and verifying the cluster is healthy at the new version. Every step maps to a specific exam task. Finally, you'll learn how to install and manage cluster components with Helm charts and Kustomize overlays, two tools added to the February 2025 exam curriculum. You'll also inspect Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs) and install an operator to understand how the Kubernetes API is extended by third-party tools. When you're finished with this course, you'll have the lifecycle management skills needed to maintain production Kubernetes clusters and handle the etcd, upgrade, Helm, and CRD tasks that appear on the CKA exam.