I recently passed the VMware Cloud Native Master Specialist Exam. The what? yeah…. Let me explain. By passing this exam you’ll earn a badge called “Cloud Native Master Specialist”. And according to VMware:

Earning this badge will certify that the successful candidate has the knowledge and skills necessary to architect a Kubernetes-based platform supported by complimentary technologies from the Cloud Native ecosystem for continuous delivery of applications.

So you’ll get a badge, not a “certification”. Not sure what the difference is though… The most important reason why I needed to pass the exam is that VMware requires a certain number of people with said badge in a company seeking to earn the Cloud Native Master Service Competency. Read more about MSC here. Since there is not a log of information about the exam out there I’ll give a quick overview of it here.

Exam Pre-reqs

The only pre-req for this exam is the CKA certification. I posted about the CKA exam earlier. You don’t need a VCP certification as most other VMware exams do. Nor do you need any formal training.

Exam Format

The exam is a multiple choice exam. I think I got 67 Questions, not sure if that’s always the same. You have 100 minutes to answer all of them.

Knowledge needed

All exam topics are listed in this blueprint pdf. To summarize you’ll need to the following skills to pass the exam: