PCAexam prep · Linux Foundation · intermediate
Prometheus Certified Associate (PCA) Complete Prep
Master Prometheus monitoring and PromQL to pass the Linux Foundation PCA exam. This course covers all five official exam domains: Observability Concepts, Prometheus Fundamentals, PromQL, Instrumentation & Exporters, and Alerting & Dashboarding — with hands-on labs, Grafana integration, and Kubernetes production patterns.
- 12 hours
- 26 lessons
- 6 modules
- 50-question practice exam
- updated May 2026
Mapped to the PCA exam guide
Every module is tagged with the exam domain it covers.
Try it before you sign up
Read a full lesson and answer 3 questions from the Module 1 quiz. No account needed.
The Three Pillars of Observability
6 modules, 26 lessons
Module 1 is free — lessons, hands-on walkthrough and quiz. The course ends with a 50-question practice exam.
- readThe Three Pillars of Observability25 min
- videoPrometheus Architecture Explained20 min
- hands-onHands-On: Run Prometheus Locally and Explore /metrics20 min
- quizObservability Concepts Quiz15 min
Built by the CloudaQube team
No celebrity instructor — here is exactly what goes into the course instead.
- 01 Follows the official PCA exam guide — every module is tagged with the exam domain it covers.
- 02 7 guided hands-on walkthroughs you run in a real environment.
- 03 6 module quizzes and a 50-question practice exam — every answer comes with an explanation.
- 04 Last updated May 2026.
- 05 Any module can become a hands-on lab in Labs Studio.
What you'll be able to do
- 01 Explain the observability pillars and the pull-based Prometheus architecture
- 02 Identify all four metric types and select the correct one for a given instrumentation scenario
- 03 Build PromQL queries using selectors, aggregation operators, rate(), histogram_quantile(), and binary operators
- 04 Apply recording rules and Alertmanager routing trees to build a production alerting pipeline
- 05 Evaluate exporters and client libraries to instrument custom applications and third-party services
- 06 Demonstrate a complete kube-prometheus-stack deployment on Kubernetes with SLO dashboards in Grafana
- — Basic Linux CLI — comfortable running shell commands and editing YAML files
- — Familiarity with Docker and container concepts
- — General understanding of how web services and HTTP APIs work
- — Basic YAML syntax knowledge
Before you start PCA
Is this course current for the PCA exam?
It follows the current PCA exam guide — all 5 exam domains, with the weights shown on this page, and was last updated May 2026.
How do I book the PCA exam, and what does it cost?
You book it directly with the Linux Foundation. The official exam page lists the current fee, format, length and passing score, which can vary by country.
Is this an exam dump?
No. The lessons and quiz questions are written to teach the exam objectives, and every answer comes with an explanation. Real exam questions (“dumps”) break the exam provider’s candidate agreement and can cost you the certification.
How long does it take?
About 12 hours of lessons, videos and hands-on walkthroughs across 6 modules, plus a 50-question practice exam.
What’s free?
Module 1 in full — lessons, hands-on walkthrough and quiz — with no card required. Any paid plan (from $8.99/mo) unlocks all 6 modules and the practice exam, and starts with a 14-day free trial.
Start PCA with Module 1 free.
No card required. Unlock every module and the practice exam from $8.99/mo when you’re ready.