What you'll learn

Running workloads inside a cluster is only useful if traffic can reach them. In this course, Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA): Services, DNS, and Ingress Networking, you'll gain the ability to expose applications using every traffic routing pattern the CKA exam tests. First, you'll explore Kubernetes Service types in depth: ClusterIP for internal communication, NodePort for direct node access, and LoadBalancer for cloud-integrated external exposure. You'll create each type, verify connectivity with EndpointSlices, and understand when to use each pattern based on cost, security, and operational tradeoffs. Next, you'll discover Ingress controllers and Ingress resources for Layer 7 HTTP routing. You'll install Traefik via Helm, configure host-based and path-based routing rules, TLS termination, and default backends. You'll troubleshoot common Ingress failures including missing backends and certificate mismatches. Finally, you'll learn the Gateway API, the NEW traffic management standard added to the February 2025 CKA exam. You'll install the Gateway API CRDs, configure GatewayClass and Gateway resources, create HTTPRoute rules for traffic splitting and header-based routing, and understand how Gateway API improves on Ingress with role-oriented resource separation. When you're finished with this course, you'll have the traffic routing skills needed to expose applications using Services, Ingress, and Gateway API on production Kubernetes clusters and handle every related task on the CKA exam.