The Prometheus Certified Associate (PCA) exam demonstrates an engineer’s foundational knowledge of observability and skills using Prometheus, the open source systems monitoring and alerting toolkit.
The PCA is a pre-professional certification designed for an engineer or application developer with special interests in observability and monitoring. Ideal candidates may have achieved Kubernetes certifications such as KCNA, CKA, or CKAD or have completed Prometheus-specific training or Cloud Engineer bootcamps.
A certified PCA will confirm foundational knowledge for building or scraping observability data in the application stack whether or not it is cloud native. The PCA exam is intended to prepare candidates to work with the fundamentals of data monitoring, metrics, alerts, and dashboards using Prometheus.
The PCA demonstrates a candidate’s understanding of best practices for monitoring cloud native applications and infrastructure using Prometheus. A PCA digital credential ensures the candidate understands how to use observability data to improve application performance, troubleshoot system implementations, and feed that data into other systems.
Cost $250 | Online Exam
About the program
A PCA certification allows candidates to demonstrate their foundational knowledge of best practices for monitoring cloud native applications and infrastructure using Prometheus. It prepares candidates to work with the fundamentals of data monitoring, metrics, alerts, and dashboards using Prometheus. Anyone who works in production, such as SysAdmins, Devs, Ops, SREs and Platform would benefit from this certification.
The PCA Certification validates
- Foundational knowledge of Prometheus architecture, components, and data flow.
- Skills in configuring and using Prometheus to collect metrics from applications and systems via exporters and knowledge of Prometheus metric types.
- Ability to query and analyze data using PromQL (Prometheus Query Language) and create basic and advanced queries to derive actionable insights.
- Understanding of how to configure alert rules and use Alertmanager to send notifications via different channels.
- Knowledge of monitoring best practices and strategies for effective monitoring in environments like Kubernetes
The PCA exam is an entry-level certification designed to validate expertise in metrics collection, querying, and monitoring concepts using Prometheus. A certification proves the candidate is able to set up and manage Prometheus instances and understands the role of Prometheus in the cloud-native ecosystem.
CNCF has open sourced the curriculum around which the PCA exam has been created to guide candidates’ exam preparation.CNCF offers wholesale pricing on our exams to training companies purchasing in bulk. For more information, please contact trainingpartners@cncf.io.
Exam details
This exam is an online, proctored, multiple-choice exam.
| Domain | Weight |
|---|---|
| Observability Concepts | 18% |
| Prometheus Fundamentals | 20% |
| PromQL | 28% |
| Instrumentation and Exporters | 16% |
| Alerting & Dashboarding | 18% |
The cost is $250 and includes one free retake. For questions on the exam, please reach out.