Prometheus Certified Associate (PCA) - Pearson Cert Prep (Video)

Description

12+ Hours of Video Instruction

Become certified in Prometheus while learning how to monitor Linux and Kubernetes effectively.

Prometheus is an open source monitoring and alerting toolkit with a powerful dimensional data model and query language (PromQL) built for modern, dynamic cloud native environments. The Prometheus Certified Associate (PCA) credential validates foundational observability knowledge and hands-on Prometheus skills that todays DevOps, SRE, and platform teams rely on. In Prometheus Certified Associate (PCA) Pearson Cert Prep, youll go beyond theory with practical, exam-focused training that walks you through installing and configuring Prometheus, collecting metrics with exporters, building dashboards (Grafana), creating actionable alerts (Alertmanager), and mastering PromQL, so you can confidently monitor Linux and Kubernetes in real environments and be ready for exam day.

Topics include:

• Installing and Configuring Prometheus
• Prometheus Architecture and Core Concepts
• Observability and Monitoring Fundamentals
• Metrics, Querying, and Visualization
• Alerting and Incident Response
• Instrumenting Applications and Data
• PCA Exam Preparation

Skill Level:

• Beginner to Intermediate

Learn How To:

• Set up a complete Prometheus environment using common installation options (binary, Docker, and scripted installs) for fast lab-to-production readiness.
• Collect and normalize metrics with exporters to monitor real systems and services.
• Write PromQL queries to slice, aggregate, and analyze time-series metrics with precision.
• Create dashboards and visualizations by connecting Prometheus to Grafana for operational clarity.
• Design alert rules and route notifications with Alertmanager to reduce noise and accelerate response.
• Monitor Linux systems and Kubernetes clusters in the Prometheus Web UI and using custom Grafana dashboards.

Course requirement: 

• Recommended: At least one virtual machine running Linux, preferably two running Ubuntu Server.
• Knowledge of the terminal
• Access to GitHub
• (Optional) An IDE (such as Visual Studio Code)

Who Should Take This Course:

Cloud engineers, Site Reliability Engineers, software developers, DevOps personnel, SysAdmins, or anyone else interested in learning key Prometheus skills.

About Pearson Video Training:   

Pearson publishes expert-led video tutorials covering a wide selection of technology topics designed to teach you the skills you need to succeed. These professional and personal technology videos feature world-leading author instructors published by your trusted technology brands: Addison-Wesley, Cisco Press, Pearson IT Certification, Prentice Hall, Sams, and Que Topics include: IT Certification, Network Security, Cisco Technology, Programming, Web Development, Mobile Development, and more.  Learn more about Pearson Video training at  http://www.informit.com/video.

Video Lessons are available for download for offline viewing within the streaming format. Look for the green arrow in each lesson.

Sample Content

Table of Contents

Introduction

Lesson 1: Pre-Test and System Setup      

1.1       Pre-test assessment

1.2       Recommended lab setup

1.3       Instructor setup

1.4       Accessing the Git repository

Lesson 2: Prometheus Fundamentals

2.1       Monitoring introduction

2.2       What is Prometheus?

2.3       High-Level overview of Prometheus components

Lesson 3: Installing Prometheus   

3.1       Prometheus installation options

3.2       Installing Prometheus - from binary

3.3       Basic usage of Prometheus

3.4       Installing Prometheus - from provided scripts

3.5       File locations in Prometheus

3.6       The Prometheus help system & documentation

3.7       Installing Prometheus - to Docker

Lesson 4: Observability Concepts

4.1       Introduction to metrics

4.2       Metrics versus logs and traces

4.3       Traces and spans

4.4       Understanding system logs and events

4.5       Push versus pull systems

4.6       Service discovery

Lesson 5: Basic Querying  

5.1       Basic querying

5.2       The Prometheus web UI

5.3       Expression language data types

5.4       More query examples

Lesson 6: Monitoring Fundamentals         

6.1       Exporters

6.2       Using the node_exporter

6.3       Other exporters

Lesson 7: Dashboarding     

7.1       Dashboarding basics

7.2       Installing Grafana

7.3       Grafana basics

Lesson 8: Alerting and Rules         

8.1       Introduction to alerts and rules

8.2       Installing the Alertmanager

8.3       Alerting basics - when, what, and why

8.4       Configuring alerting rules

8.5       Connecting the Alertmanager to external services

8.6       Using alerts in Grafana

8.7       SLIs, SLOs, and SLAs

Lesson 9: PromQL   

9.1       A more in-depth look at PromQL

9.2       Selecting data

9.3       Rates and derivatives

9.4       Aggregating over time

9.5       Aggregating over dimensions

9.6       Binary operators

9.7       Histograms

9.8       Timestamp metrics

9.9       PromQL - tying it all together

Lesson 10: Instrumenting Data      

10.1     Introduction to instrumentation

10.2     Client libraries

10.3     Structuring and naming metrics

10.4     Instrumenting a web server

10.5     Instrumenting an application

10.6     Instrumentation with OpenTelemetry and Prometheus

Lesson 11: Monitoring Linux          

11.1     Best practices for Linux monitoring

11.2     Installing a node_exporter Grafana dashboard

11.3     Testing and analyzing nodes

11.4     Installing an Apache exporter

11.5     Query Apache metrics

Lesson 12: Monitoring Kubernetes           

12.1     Installation options for Kubernetes

12.2     Installing the Prometheus stack inside a K8s cluster

12.3     Remote access to the cluster

12.4     Monitoring the cluster with Prometheus

12.5     Monitoring the cluster with Grafana

12.6     Deploying & monitoring a web server in the cluster

12.7     Monitoring Kubernetes externally

Lesson 13: Exam Preparation and Final Quiz      

13.1     Exam details

13.2     Preparing for the exam

13.3     Exam-taking techniques

13.4     Practice questions #1 - #6

13.5     Practice questions #7 - #12

13.6     Practice question #13

13.7     Practice question #14

13.8     Practice question #15

Updates

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