OpenStack COA Requirements

The OpenStack Foundation has developed the Certified OpenStack Administrator exam which offers a career-path based certification for OpenStack professionals. The exam is performance-based and will test the baseline skills of an OpenStack Administrator, a person with at least 6 months of OpenStack experience who provides day-to-day operation and management of an OpenStack cloud.

Below are the specific content areas (knowledge domains) and the specific tasks on which candidates may be expected to demonstrate their knowledge.

A basic understanding of Ubuntu Linux process management is assumed.

OpenStack APIs

You must understand how to use the available APIs to complete the COA tasks:

• Use the Dashboard UI (Horizon)
• Use the OpenStack CLI client

Identity management - 15%

• Manage and create domains, projects, users, and roles
• Understand the differences between the member and admin roles
• Create roles for the environment
• Create and manage policy files and user access rules
• Create and manage RC files to authenticate with Keystone for command line use

Compute - 35%

• Create and manage flavors
• Create and manage compute instances (for example, launch, shutdown, terminate)
• Generate and manage SSH keys for use when connecting to instances
• Access an instance using an SSH key
• Configure an instance with a floating IP address;use it to connect to the instance
• Create instances with security groups
• Manage Nova host consoles (VNC, NOVNC, spice)
• Manage instance snapshots
• Manage instance quotas

Object Storage - 5%

• Use the command line client to upload and manage files to Swift containers
• Manage permissions on a container in object storage

Block Storage - 10%

• Create and manage volumes
• Attach volumes to instances
• Create a new Block Storage volume and mount it to a Nova instance
• Manage volume quotas
• Backup and restore volumes
• Manage volume snapshots (for example, create, list, recover)

Networking - 30%

• Manage network resources (routers, networks, subnets)
• Create external/public networks
• Create project networks
• Create project routers
• Attach routers to public and project networks
• Manage network services for a virtual environment
• Manage network quotas
• Manage network interfaces on compute instances
• Create and manage project security groups and rules
• Assign security group to instance
• Create and manage floating IP addresses
• Assign floating IP address to instance
• Detach floating IP address from instance

Image management - 5%

• Upload a new image to an OpenStack image repository
• Manage images (for example, add, update, remove)
• Understand the difference between public versus private images
• Manage image metadata/properties
• Manage image types and backends