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DCA study materials
DCA study resources

Docker Certified Associate (DCA) study guide

DCA · Work through your exam, one topic at a time.

The Docker Certified Associate (DCA) is a professional credential for Docker container technologies, described by its awarding body as the first and only official certification program for Docker skills. It was created for practitioners working with the Docker Enterprise Edition platform in production, and the exam is designed to validate professionals with a minimum of 6 to 12 months of Docker experience. Basic familiarity with Docker Community Edition is considered a strong asset, since many topics overlap between the two editions. The exam is remotely proctored on a Windows or Mac computer, is delivered globally in English, and consists of 13 multiple choice and 42 discrete option multiple choice questions in 90 minutes. Results are delivered immediately, and the certification is valid for 2 years, after which you must update it. Preparation paths suggested by the awarding body include a curated Docker Certification Bootcamp and a study guide with sample questions and exam preparation tips. Topics on this exam: Docker container technologies (Docker Enterprise Edition platform, with Docker Community Edition familiarity). The DCA study guide has 1 section and about 466 words.

01

Docker container technologies: Docker EE platform with CE familiarity

This domain tests whether you can operate containers on the Docker Enterprise Edition stack - EE Engine, Universal Control Plane (UCP) and Docker Trusted Registry (DTR) - while knowing which behaviors come from the Community Edition engine. Expect swarm primitives, service and stack deployment, secrets and configs, volumes, and registry workflows. EE Engine is the same dockerd as CE, packaged with supported versions in Docker EE 3.x. UCP is not a separate orchestrator: it is a management layer over swarm mode adding RBAC, LDAP/AD, collections and a UI.

466 words, about 2 min

More study resources for DCA

  • Practice questionsIn Docker Enterprise Edition, which component provides role-based access control and centralized management of users and teams across multiple Universal Control Plane clusters?
  • FlashcardsOCI runtime (runc). The low-level component that creates namespaces and cgroups and launches the container process from an unpacked root filesystem, implementing the OCI runtime specification.
  • Cheat sheetDocker Engine architecture: dockerd (daemon) exposes the REST API and manages containers; containerd handles image transfer, storage, and container execution; runc is the OCI-compliant low-level runtime that actually creates namespaces/cgroups and starts the process.
  • Key termsContainer. A lightweight, isolated runtime environment created from an image.
  • Study planInstall Docker Engine (Community Edition) on a Linux host and on Docker Desktop, then verify with docker version, docker info, and hello-world.
  • Common mistakesCandidates study Swarm services and Compose stacks as one topic and memorise one set of flags.
  • Exam-day guideBring the exact ID the registration was made under, with a name that matches your registration.