Learn about the CCA, from one of its creators, Nico Vibert
Nico Verbert is a Senior Staff Technical Marketing Engineer at Isovalent at Cisco and one of the creators of the Cilium Certified Associate Certification (CCA). Nico is a leading cloud and networking technologist, with over 18 years’ experience in the industry. He’s passionate about making customers successful with their business strategy through the use of innovative technology. We spoke to Nico about his role, Cilium and its importance in the Kubernetes ecosystem, the CCA exam and how to prepare, and the benefits of getting the certification.
Tell us about what you do:
My official title, Senior Staff Technical Marketing Engineer, is quite a mouthful. In simple terms, my role is to make Kubernetes networking – an intimidating topic for many – a bit more approachable.
Given that folks like to learn in different ways, I use different methods to teach and educate: blog posts, books, videos, online labs, social media, conferences and online workshops, etc.
Isovalent was founded by the creators of Cilium (the most popular cloud native networking platform) and acquired by the networking giant Cisco, so I get to work with the brightest minds in networking. I’m very privileged to do this for a living.
What is Cilium?
Cilium is a cloud native networking, security and observability solution powered by a revolutionary technology called eBPF. Over the past few years, Cilium has become the de-facto networking platform for Kubernetes. It’s been adopted by the likes of AWS, Azure and Google to power their Kubernetes services and distributions and is so widely adopted it is the only “Graduated” platform in the CNCF Cloud Native Networking category.
Whenever you face a networking challenge in Kubernetes, it’s likely that you will consider using Cilium to address it.
What is the Cilium Certified Associate certification?
It is the Linux Foundation entry-level certification for Cilium. The CCA certification was built in collaboration with Isovalent and Cilium experts from all across the industry, from companies such as Microsoft, Accenture, Datadog, Solo.io, Conoa, etc. The CCA is a 90-minute multiple choice exam, covering Cilium and Kubernetes networking topics such as architecture, network policy, service mesh, installation and configuration. Eventually, I hope we’ll have a multi-tier certification path and follow the CCA with an expert-level hands-on exam. But I’d recommend folks to get started with the CCA first.
Why should engineers prepare for the CCA?
When you consider the list of CNCF certifications, you’ll see that the established ones like the CKA and CKAD are quite broad. The only “Specialist” certification is the Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist (CKS).
If you’re interested in networking, you may wonder whether there will ever be a networking-focused “CKN”. I think it’s unlikely – the Kubernetes networking model is a plug’n’play one where you – platform engineers and architects – have to decide which container network interface you should install in your cluster. There are too many networking options to come up with a CKN. But given that Cilium is approaching the status of “Kubernetes networking by default,” I think the CCA is the closest exam to what a “CKN” might look like.
And as I mentioned earlier, networking is often perceived as hard. If you can demonstrate a good understanding and foundation knowledge through passing the CCA, it’s going to help you stand out from the crowd of other applicants and candidates.
How do you recommend people prepare for the CCA?
This Study Guide is a really good start. In addition, I would recommend many of the videos on our YouTube channel but best of all, I would highly recommend our free online hands-on labs. We now have 30+ labs that cover various Cilium use cases and we’ve designed them to be short but also entertaining. Let me know what you think – you can find me on LinkedIn.
Level up your skills, sign up for the Cilium Certified Associate Certification (CCA).