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CCA Administrator Exam (CCA131)

  • Number of Questions: 8–12 performance-based (hands-on) tasks on pre-configured Cloudera Enterprise cluster. 
  • Time Limit: 120 minutes
  • Passing Score: 70%
  • Language: English
  • Exam Question Format

Each CCA question requires you to solve a particular scenario. Some of the tasks require making configuration and service changes via Cloudera Manager, while others demand knowledge of command line Hadoop utilities and basic competence with the Linux environment.

Evaluation, Score Reporting, and Certificate

Your exam is graded immediately upon submission and you are e-mailed a score report within three days of your exam. Your score report displays the problem number for each problem you attempted and a grade on that problem. If you fail a problem, the score report includes the criteria you failed (e.g., “Records contain incorrect data” or “Incorrect file format”). We do not report more information in order to protect the exam content. Read more about reviewing exam content on the FAQ.

If you pass the exam, you receive a second e-mail within a week of your exam with your digital certificate as a PDF and your license number.

Audience and Prerequisites

There are no prerequisites for taking any Cloudera certification exam; however, a background in system administration, or equivalent training is strongly recommended. The CCA Administrator exam (CCA131) follows the same objectives as Cloudera Administrator Training and the training course is an excellent part of preparation for the exam.

Watch a free OnDemand course to help prepare for your certification.

Learn more about our full OnDemand library.

Have questions? Read our Certification FAQ

Contact us at certification@cloudera.com to verify a certification.

Required Skills

Install

Demonstrate an understanding of the installation process for Cloudera Manager, CDH, and the ecosystem projects.

  • Set up a local CDH repository
  • Perform OS-level configuration for Hadoop installation
  • Install Cloudera Manager server and agents
  • Install CDH using Cloudera Manager
  • Add a new node to an existing cluster
  • Add a service using Cloudera Manager

Configure

Perform basic and advanced configuration needed to effectively administer a Hadoop cluster

  • Configure a service using Cloudera Manager
  • Create an HDFS user's home directory
  • Configure NameNode HA
  • Configure ResourceManager HA
  • Configure proxy for Hiveserver2/Impala

Manage

Maintain and modify the cluster to support day-to-day operations in the enterprise

  • Rebalance the cluster
  • Set up alerting for excessive disk fill
  • Define and install a rack topology script
  • Install new type of I/O compression library in cluster
  • Revise YARN resource assignment based on user feedback
  • Commission/decommission a node

Secure

Enable relevant services and configure the cluster to meet goals defined by security policy; demonstrate knowledge of basic security practices

  • Configure HDFS ACLs
  • Install and configure Sentry
  • Configure Hue user authorization and authentication
  • Enable/configure log and query redaction
  • Create encrypted zones in HDFS

Test

Benchmark the cluster operational metrics, test system configuration for operation and efficiency

  • Execute file system commands via HTTPFS
  • Efficiently copy data within a cluster/between clusters
  • Create/restore a snapshot of an HDFS directory
  • Get/set ACLs for a file or directory structure
  • Benchmark the cluster (I/O, CPU, network)

Troubleshoot

Demonstrate ability to find the root cause of a problem, optimize inefficient execution, and resolve resource contention scenarios

  • Resolve errors/warnings in Cloudera Manager
  • Resolve performance problems/errors in cluster operation
  • Determine reason for application failure
  • Configure the Fair Scheduler to resolve application delays

 

Exam delivery and cluster information

CCA Administrator Exam (CCA131)  is a hands-on, practical exam using Cloudera technologies. Each user is given their own CDH6 (currently 6.1.1) cluster running on CentOS 7.4.

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