Learn to install and roll back apps with Helm, customize manifests with Kustomize, and inspect CRDs and operators for the CKA exam.
It is 6:40 PM on a Friday in Bengaluru. A platform engineer needs a new staging copy of the orders service, so she copies the production YAML...
Helm has three nouns you must keep apart: the chart (the package), the release (one installation of it) and the repository (a place charts are...
A Helm release lifecycle has five commands you will use constantly: install, upgrade, history, rollback and uninstall.
Kustomize builds final manifests from a base (your normal YAML) plus overlays (small per-environment changes), all described in a file called...
A CustomResourceDefinition (CRD) adds a new resource type to the Kubernetes API, and a custom resource (CR) is one object of that type.
An operator is a controller that watches custom resources and makes the cluster match what they describe.
It is 6:40 PM on a Friday in Bengaluru. A platform engineer needs a new staging copy of the orders service, so she...
Helm has three nouns you must keep apart: the chart (the package), the release (one installation of it) and the...
A Helm release lifecycle has five commands you will use constantly: install, upgrade, history, rollback and uninstall.
Kustomize builds final manifests from a base (your normal YAML) plus overlays (small per-environment changes), all...
A CustomResourceDefinition (CRD) adds a new resource type to the Kubernetes API, and a custom resource (CR) is one...
An operator is a controller that watches custom resources and makes the cluster match what they describe.
These six labs use only a kind or kubeadm cluster with kubectl and Helm installed.
These drills copy the shape of exam tasks: a starting state, one exact task, a time limit and a success check.
Troubleshooting is the largest exam domain, so every area has a short method.
Quick reference Common mistakes A common Helm mistake is upgrading with only a single --set and losing every earlier...
Roles that use the skills in this module.
DevOps Engineer
Site Reliability Engineer
Platform Engineer
Not a software engineer sheet. Every problem comes from real DevOps, SRE, Platform and Cloud interviews, from your first script to a system you build yourself.
Open the Coding SheetUse Helm when you want to install software someone else packaged, such as an ingress controller or metrics-server. Use Kustomize when you own the YAML and need small differences between environments. They solve different problems and many teams use both, for example by running Kustomize over the output of helm template.
A chart is the package: templates plus default values. A release is one installation of that chart in a cluster, with a name, a namespace and a revision number. You can install the same chart many times and get many independent releases.
No. A CRD only adds a new resource type to the Kubernetes API, so the API server can store and validate objects of that type. An operator is a controller that watches those objects and acts on them. Without the controller, a custom resource is just stored data.
No. The CKA expects you to understand what CRDs and operators are, install an operator, and work with its custom resources. Writing a controller or designing a CRD schema is outside the exam.
Helm never deletes history. A rollback applies the old revision's manifests as a new revision, so the history stays a complete, ordered record of everything that was deployed. You can see this in helm history, where the new line says it is a rollback to an earlier revision.