Helm, Kustomize, Extension Interfaces, and Operators

Introduction

This lesson completes the Cluster Architecture, Installation & Configuration domain (25% of the CKA, Kubernetes v1.35). Three official curriculum items are covered here: use Helm and Kustomize to install cluster components, understand extension interfaces (CNI, CSI, CRI, etc.), and understand CRDs, and install and configure operators. In the exam these show up as tasks such as "install the chart bitnami/nginx as release web in namespace demo with 3 replicas", "apply the Kustomize overlay in ~/app/overlays/prod", or "install this CRD and create a custom resource". The commands are short, but you must know the flags and be able to inspect what a tool will produce before applying it.