PCA - Prometheus Certified Associate
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.
Exam Overview
| Detail | Information |
| Exam Format | Multiple Choice |
| Number of Questions | 60 |
| Duration | 90 minutes |
| Passing Score | 75% |
| Certification Validity | 3 years |
| Cost | $250 USD |
| Retake Policy | 1 free retake |
Exam Domains & Weights
Prerequisites
- Basic understanding of Linux command line
- Familiarity with containerized environments (Docker/Kubernetes)
- General understanding of monitoring concepts
- Basic knowledge of YAML configuration
Study Resources
Official Resources
Recommended Courses
Practice Resources
Exam Tips
- Understand the Three Pillars of Observability: Logs, Metrics, and Traces
- Master PromQL: This is 28% of the exam - practice writing queries
- Know SLA/SLO/SLI: Understand the differences and relationships
- Practice with Real Prometheus: Set up a local instance and experiment
- Understand Push vs Pull: Know when to use each approach
- Learn Alertmanager: Configuration, routing, and notification channels
Key Topics to Master
Observability Concepts
- Metrics, Logs, and Traces
- Push vs Pull model
- Service Discovery
- SLAs, SLOs, and SLIs
Prometheus Architecture
- Prometheus Server components
- Time Series Database (TSDB)
- Scrape configuration
- Data model and labels
PromQL
- Selectors and matchers
- Aggregation operators
- Rate and increase functions
- Histogram queries
Exporters
- Node Exporter
- Blackbox Exporter
- Custom exporters
- Client libraries
Alerting
- Alert rules
- Alertmanager configuration
- Routing and grouping
- Notification channels
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