The Red Hat Certified Specialist in OpenShift Application Development exam (EX288) tests your ability to deploy existing applications in a Red Hat® OpenShift® Container Platform environment.

By passing this exam, you become a Red Hat Certified Specialist in OpenShift Application Development, which also counts toward becoming a Red Hat Certified Architect (RHCA®).

This exam is based on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform 4.6.

Audience for this exam

• Application developers in a DevOps role who are responsible for managing a Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform Kubernetes environment
• Application developers in a DevOps role who are responsible for implementing a Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform Kubernetes environment
• Application developers who are responsible for creating containerized applications or converting existing applications into containerized applications
• Site reliability engineers

Prerequisites for this exam

• Prior to taking this exam, you should possess a basic understanding of container technology. Some programming experience is strongly recommended but not required. The ability to use documentation to learn how to use unfamiliar or new applications is required.
• Take our free assessment to find the course that best supports your preparation for this exam.
• Completion of Red Hat OpenShift Development II: Containerizing Applications (DO288) is strongly encouraged but not required.
• The Red Hat Certified Specialist in Containers and Kubernetes credential is strongly encouraged but not required.

Preparation

Red Hat encourages you to consider taking Red Hat OpenShift I: Containers & Kubernetes (DO180) and Red Hat OpenShift Development II: Containerizing Applications (DO288) to help prepare. Attendance in these classes is not required; students can choose to take just the exam.

While attending Red Hat classes can be an important part of one's preparation to take this exam, attending class does not guarantee success on the exam. Previous experience, practice, and native aptitude are also important determinants of success.

Many books and other resources on system administration for Red Hat's products are available. Red Hat does not officially endorse any as preparation guides for its exam. Nevertheless, you may find additional reading deepens understanding and can prove helpful.

Exam format

This exam consists of a single section lasting three hours. The exam is a performance-based evaluation of your ability to deploy applications in a Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform environment. You will perform a number of routine tasks similar to those you would be expected to perform in an OpenShift Container Platform DevOps environment and will be evaluated on whether you have met specific objective criteria.

This exam can also be taken virtually as part of our remote testing format. Find out more about remote exams to see if this is the right choice for you.

Scores and reporting

Official scores for exams come exclusively from Red Hat Certification Central. Red Hat does not authorize examiners or training partners to report results to candidates directly. Scores on the exam are usually reported within 3 US business days.

Exam results are reported as total scores. Red Hat does not report performance on individual items, nor will it provide additional information upon request.

Study points for the exam

To help you prepare, the exam objectives highlight the task areas you can expect to see covered in the exam. Red Hat reserves the right to add, modify, and remove exam objectives. Such changes will be made public in advance.

As part of this exam, you should be able to perform these tasks:

• Work with Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform
  • Create and work with multiple OpenShift projects
  • Deploy single container and multi-container applications
  • Create and use a Helm chart
  • Customize deployments with Kustomize
  • Implement application health monitoring
  • Understand basic Git usage and work with Git in the context of deploying applications in OpenShift
  • Configure the OpenShift internal registry to meet specific requirements
  • Create and deploy cloud-native applications for OpenShift
  • Manage applications with the web console
• Deploy multi-container applications
  • Create Helm charts
  • Customizing deployments with Kustomize
• Work with container images
  • Use command line utilities to create and manipulate container images
  • Optimize container images
  • Publish container images to a registry
• Troubleshoot application deployment issues
  • Diagnose and correct minor issues with application deployment
• Work with image streams
  • Create custom image streams to deploy applications
  • Pull applications from existing Git repositories
  • Debug minor issues with application deployment
• Work with configuration maps
  • Create configuration maps
  • Use configuration maps to inject data into applications
• Work with the source-to-image (S2I) tool
  • Deploy applications using S2I
  • Customize existing S2I builder images
• Work with hooks and triggers
  • Create a hook that runs a provided script
  • Test and confirm proper operation of the hook
  • Manage and trigger application builds
• Work with templates
  • Create an OpenShift template
  • Use pre-existing templates written in either JSON or YAML format
  • Work with multi-container templates
  • Add custom parameters to a template

During the exam you may be required to work with one or more pre-written applications. You will not be required to modify application code however in some cases you may need to utilize supplied documentation in order to fully test and complete the deployment of a given application.