How to enter the Kubestronaut orbit and beyond 🚀

Posted on November 25, 2024

Certifications & Training post originally published on Medium by Giorgi Keratishvili

Introduction

Most probably, your LinkedIn feed is full of posts from people speaking about the Kubestronaut program or even becoming one of them, and you still wonder what “Kubestronaut” even means. Then, my dear friend, buckle up. We will dive deep into what this program does, how it may help you with your career, how to get involved in community activities, and what kind of opportunities Kubestronaut can give you. We will go a bit beyond…

Before we start let me introduce myself, my name is Giorgi Keratishvili and I am from Georgia, I have been in the IT field for more than a decade, and during this period has been exposed to the majority of fields of Development and Operation starting from bare metal infrastructure to higher level of automation, agile transformation, container orchestration, Platform Engineering, SRE, Incident Management, and Cloud Native Maturity, Besides my profession, I am very actively involved in the community, I play the role of AWS Community leader in Tbilisi also Ambassador for CD foundation, CNCF Kubestronaut, CNCF chapter lead, IEEE Senior Member and Ambassador for Institute of DevOps, I conduct meetups to grow DevOps/SRE/Platform Engineering awareness inside Georgian community, with Kubernetes have been working for last 5 years and have been passionate about cloud-native since then…

Pre–flight checks

Before we start speaking about the program let’s debunk the myths and legends about certifications because during my career I was often asked “Would getting XXX certification make me 10x engineer?” The camp splits into two categories, people who believe in certification and people who think it is a waste of time, money and energy, the answer to that question it’s heavily depends on multiple factors, the first thing we need to understand what purpose does this cert is intended for and what we can expect from it.

We need to look at certifications from different perspectives and where we are on the career ladder let’s split into three parts

Junior/Intern level
Middle/Senior level
Consultant

When Junior/Interns need advice on how to learn a new skill or get some experience they often feel lost in a maze of information, first, we need to understand for which domain do then need to learn, cause in software engineering there are not may well-known certifications as the same level in system engineering or DevOps, maybe doing project would be much better then passing some certification cause during job interviews it is often when the interviewer is discussing candidates project if they have it on GitHub or publicly available but for DevOps related topics such as Cloud, Kubernetes, and Linux.

I try to recommend certifications, because it is really hard to do a project by our self without foundational knowledge, like you can not expect from person without any background in system administration to understand concepts like what are high availability (HA) and fault tolerance (FA) systems like this kind of knowledge takes time to process, heck even some experienced engineers can not explain during interviews…

I’m a big believer in learning, training, and certifications because they provide a clear path, goal, and target. Certifications offer a structured roadmap, helping you gain deep knowledge in specific areas. While certifications may not make you a complete master in a subject, they provide a strong foundation and clear direction for continuous learning and growth.

Ramesh Kumar — Kubestronaut Program Initiator

By taking certification paths we have an exact target/goal and direction rather than just shooting in the sky also with certification there are some good training materials that go with it, so candidates can follow the structural path to prepare for it, sometimes I refer to taking certification like looking at the compass, it can get you in the right direction if you know where you want to go and what to expect there or it can get you lost without knowing the exact destination or in our case without having a goal.

For recruiters, it makes it a bit easier to differentiate but again a little bit also an important factor is which type of certification it is. There are many options of how exams are structured, performance-based certification or multiple choice one, as there are many exams, and not all are equally created on difficulty level and credibility.

Source https://cloudowski.com/articles/how-to-get-certified-in-kubernetes-and-is-it-really-worth-it/

For the Middle or Senior people, I would say it may not have much impact maybe if you are switching careers it could the case, but the majority of times company experience is much more important than gazillion certifications but would say in some companies, they do promotion-based on certification and in this case, I can relate but again it could be for lower level seniority.

Now let’s look from the perspective of consultants as they are a bit different compared to full employees as the majority of times they are called on specific problems to solve when a company may not have experience, also when making requirements pretty often companies use certification as criteria of selection for tenders and it is more valuable for business representatives from hiring company also when this contractor company or person has achieved some collection of certification they can apply as official partner of that vendor or certificated specialist, similar to AWS Services Partner or Red Hat Certified Architect

Launching Into The Kubestronaut Orbit

Now let’s speak about the program, its requirements and what you could expect at the end of achieving Kubestronaut status, I will not cover exam preparations in this blog but you can check my exam guide as part of the Kubestronaut journey at the bottom.

As you already may know, in order to get Kubestronaut status, the candidate needs to hold 5 active certificates Kubernetes certifications Kubernetes and Cloud Native Associate Exam (KCNA), Kubernetes and Cloud Native Security Associate (KCSA), Certified Kubernetes Application Developer Exam (CKAD), Certified Kubernetes Administrator Exam (CKA) and Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist Exam (CKS) yes all of them needs to be active/valid, here are more details of requirements and FAQ:

How do I become eligible to become a Kubestronaut?

To become a Kubestronaut, you need to pass all Kubernetes-related certifications: CKA, CKAD, CKS, KCNA, and KCSA. All certifications must be current/active (i.e., in good standing/valid, not expired).

What happens after completing the 5th Kubernetes certification?

After completing your 5th Kubernetes certification, expect an email from CNCF staff with next steps. You’ll be asked to fill out a Google form with required information, enabling CNCF to dispatch your Blue Jacket and feature your profile on the Kubestronaut map.

What are the benefits of being a Kubestronaut?

Kubestronauts will receive the title of “Kubestronaut”, as well as these additional benefits:

An exclusive Kubestronaut jacket to show off your elite status
A Credly badge to showcase your expertise
Access to the dedicated/private Kubestronaut Slack channel and mailing list
Coupons for 50% off five certifications each year — for yourself or to share
25% off three CNCF events a year
Additionally, all Kubestronaut holders will be listed on the global map featured on this page: https://www.cncf.io/training/kubestronaut/

If I don’t have all 5 exams- but I have something else (e.g., KCNA, KCSA, PCA, CKA…or any other combination of CNCF exams) — am I eligible to become a Kubestronaut?

Answer. No. To become a Kubestronaut and get the jacket, you need to have all 5 Kubernetes-related certifications — and all must be active certifications. You will have to pass the missing exams to become a Kubestronaut.

As a Kubestronaut, what happens if one of my certifications expires?

You will still be a Kubestronaut until the end of the year. Here is how CNCF is managing the expiration:

The Kubestronaut title is valid until the end of the year in which the first of the 5 certifications expires.
Every October, the CNCF sends an expiration reminder to all Kubestronauts whose status expired earlier in the year, and to those whose status will expire before the end of the year.
Kubestronauts who fail to renew their expired certification before the end of the year will lose their title and all associated benefits.
Existing Kubestronauts will receive their new voucher certifications in January of each year their status is maintained.

If I lose my status as a Kubestronaut but then regain it at a later point, do I get another jacket, vouchers, and other benefits?

As a former Kubestronaut who requalifies, you will once again enjoy the same benefits as all other Kubestronauts, except the jacket, since a Kubestronaut can only receive one single Kubestronaut jacket during their lifetime.

Can I use the 50% voucher I have received on any CNCF exam?

Yes, you can use the voucher for any CNCF exam that is available even if it was not released when you received the voucher. But keep in mind that those vouchers are for an individual exam only and not applicable to bundles (training course + certification or multi-exam.)

How can I get the voucher to attend CNCF events?

As a Kubestronaut, to get your vouchers to get 20% off a CNCF event (KubeCon or KubeDays) each year, simply contact training@cncf.io and we will be able to give you all the needed elements.

Exploring The Orbit

At this point, we understand what the requirements are and what journey we need to take, in the end, I would say it is very satisfactory to achieve recognition for preparing for this exam and successfully passing, personally when I was passing all these exams at that time there was no such thing as Kubestronaut and I was doing purely from my interest and for couple of them I even was selected as beta-tester to have a better understanding of Kubernetes ecosystem, but let’s understand how can the Kubestronaut program help us?

The first thing is that the program provides five 50% discount vouchers for certification, also small tip Linux Foundation has the tux reward program you earn 1 point for every $1 spent on every course, certification exam, bundle, or Bootcamp you buy from their platform (500 points earns you a 50% off coupon), if some of your certs are expiring it is a good way to get discount to keep the status, also as part of Kubestronaut program they provide discounts for CNCF & LF events such as KubeCon or Open Source Summit. Besides that you can get a cool jacket which is very nice, to be honest but bigger questions is what next?

I would say it purely depends on the person if he wants to contribute or grow more cause the thing is that Kubestronaut is status for Kubernetes “Subject Matter Expert” and as CNCF is always trying to expand its community influence, Kubestronauts can join many initiatives such as become SME for future CNCF certification creation. Personally, I have been authoring for a couple of exam questions in Certified GitOps Associate (CGOA), Kyverno Certified Associate (KCA), and one more future to be announced from the Kubernetes ecosystem.

I joined as a contributor to the Infrastructure Lifecycle Working Group and I had the opportunity to speak in at KubeCon China 2024 about the Kubestronaut program and been active with my local communities CNCF Chapter Tbilisi organizing meetups and collaborating with the AWS User Group Tbilisi.

I am personally a big believer we get what we give, I always love to connect with like-minded people and the whole hole of this program is exactly that to connect like-minded people to make a better influence on growing cloud native and open source communities. Also small hint there is discussion for more than the Kubestronaut program which we my hear about soon.

Conclusion

In the end, I can say I am very happy to be part of the Kubestronaut community as there are many interesting people, and in some way, it has opened doors to me for networking with some very interesting fellows. Overall I am thankful to CNCF for giving such great opportunities.

On this note, I want to highlight one very important thing which I mentioned above certifications are a good way to have some achievable goal or target but having certification does not make person expert or SME, I would say it the person who has certificate has basic knowledge and foundation on working with that technologies but the expertise comes with experience.

As a person who is doing promotional assessments and technical interviews at my work, I can always see who has theoretical knowledge and who has practical experiance and who used exam dumps…

Here is the list for exam prep guide needed for Kubestronaut: