Recommended Course: LFS258 - Kubernetes Fundamentals Bundle Price: $595 USD (includes LFS258 + CKA exam + exam retake) Duration: ~35 hours Goal: Build hands-on Kubernetes cluster management skills, including pods, networking, volumes, scheduling, Helm, and troubleshooting.
Justification:
- Most foundational certification in the Kubernetes ecosystem.
- Validates the team's ability to administer real clusters, which is essential even for application developers.
- Strongly recommended as the first milestone before security, service mesh, or GitOps tools.
Recommended Course: KCSA Self-paced eLearning (included with exam) Price: $250 USD Duration: ~20 hours Goal: Understand core cloud-native security practices, including image scanning, least privilege, secrets management, and secure workloads.
Justification:
- Complements CKA by introducing essential security best practices.
- Relevant for developers working in regulated environments (e.g., government, finance).
- Broadens team awareness of potential misconfigurations and threats.
Recommended Course: LFS260 - Kubernetes Security Essentials Bundle Price: $595 USD (includes LFS260 + CKS exam + exam retake) Duration: ~25 hours Goal: Deepen Kubernetes security expertise, covering pod security, runtime controls, network policies, auditing, and incident response.
Justification:
- CKS is advanced and requires CKA knowledge (CKA is a prerequisite).
- Enables secure design and runtime hardening for production workloads.
- Crucial for teams deploying sensitive workloads.
Recommended Bundle: LFS245 - Istio Service Mesh Essentials + ICA Exam Bundle Price: $299 USD Duration: ~15 hours Goal: Understand service mesh concepts and deploy Istio for traffic control, security, and observability.
Justification:
- Prepares the team to manage east-west traffic, canary deployments, and mTLS.
- Useful in microservices architectures and complex networking environments.
- Builds on CKA and complements security knowledge from CKS.
Recommended Bundle: LFS256 - DevOps and Workflow Management with Argo + CAPA Exam Bundle Price: $299 USD Duration: ~15 hours Goal: Learn to manage continuous delivery and workflow orchestration using Argo CD and Argo Workflows.
Justification:
- Crucial for GitOps workflows in Kubernetes (a modern standard).
- Fits perfectly into a CI/CD pipeline and integrates well with Helm, Kustomize, etc.
- Provides production-grade deployment automation techniques.
🟡 6. Optional: Prometheus Certified Associate (PCA)
Price: $250 USD Duration: ~15–20 hours Goal: Learn Prometheus for monitoring Kubernetes workloads, metrics, and alerting.
Justification:
- Valuable for observability, especially when paired with Grafana.
- Optional but beneficial for teams running their own monitoring stacks or building SRE skills.
| # | Certification | Course Bundle | Price (USD) | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | CKA | LFS258 + CKA | $595 | Foundational cluster administration |
| 2 | KCSA | Self-paced | $250 | Intro to cloud-native security |
| 3 | CKS | LFS260 + CKS | $595 | Advanced Kubernetes security |
| 4 | ICA | LFS245 + ICA | $299 | Istio and service mesh fundamentals |
| 5 | CAPA | LFS256 + CAPA | $299 | Argo for GitOps and workflows |
| 6 | PCA (optional) | Self-paced | $250 | Prometheus monitoring and alerting |
- Phase 1 (Core): CKA
- Phase 2 (Security): KCSA → CKS
- Phase 3 (Platform Specialization): ICA → CAPA
- Optional Add-on: PCA for SREs or observability champions.