Exam Objectives and Commonly Referenced Documentation for Portworx Enterprise Professional Certification

Certifications
Audience
Public
Product
FlashBlade
FlashArray
FlashStack
Evergreen
Pure1
Portworx
Source Type
Documentation

The following tables list the Portworx Enterprise Professional exam objectives and how these objectives align to the corresponding commonly referenced product documentation and resources. Candidates are encouraged to review the applicable topics as part of their preparation for the exam.

Exam Domain 1: Deploy and Install (Weightage 20%)

Exam Objectives

Applicable Documentation and Resources

1.01 - Define the prerequisites and environmental requirements for deploying Portworx

Objective Subtopics:

  • Identify environmental prerequisites (e.g., vSphere, cloud provider, Kubernetes version, networking, and access permissions)

  • Validate resource requirements such as nodes, CPU/memory, and storage devices

  1. System Requirements

  2. Install on OpenShift - Pure FlashArray Prerequisites

  3. Manage and create PVCs

1.02 - Configure the system parameters and cluster settings necessary for a successful Portworx deployment

Objective Subtopics:

  • Select the appropriate infrastructure platform and Portworx configuration method (Config Generator, PXStore-V1 vs V2)

  • Define cluster-level parameters: registry, image settings, and naming conventions

  • Adjust deployment specifications to align with platform type (on-prem vs cloud)

  1. Deployment Planning

  2. Asynchronous DR

  3. StorageCluster

  4. Manage storage nodes on VMware vSphere

  5. Autopilot Install and Setup

  6. System Requirements

1.03 - Describe the storage configuration parameters and cloud drive requirements for Portworx setup

Objective Subtopics:

  • Confirm cloud or vSphere credentials and storage permissions

  • Verify access to datastores or cloud drives and DRS status

  • Differentiate between storage-enabled and storage-less nodes and validate quorum participation

  1. Add a journal device

  2. Portworx storage nodes

  3. Manage storage nodes on VMware VSphere

  4. Upgrade Portworx Clusters using the Operator

1.04 - Understand how to configure a storage cluster

Objective Subtopics:

  • Compare specification options such as external KVDB, journal/cache/metadata devices, and AutoPilot enablement

  • Determine the appropriate configuration pattern for each infrastructure scenario

  1. StorageCluster - Network configuration

  2. Custom Resource Definitions - StorageCluster

  3. Run Hyper Converged Using Stork

  4. Reference - StorageCluster

1.05 - Identify and explain the components and services within Portworx Enterprise architecture

Objective Subtopics:

  • Identify core Portworx Enterprise components (e.g., Stork, Autopilot, PX-pods)

  • Explain each component's operational role and how pod failures manifest in cluster behavior

  1. Use Stork with Portworx

  2. Expanding your Storage Pool with Autopilot

  3. Autopilot Install and Setup

1.06 - Validate successful Portworx installation through post-deployment verification procedures

Objective Subtopics:

  • Verify post-deployment health by checking pod readiness and PX cluster status

  • Create a test PVC and deploy an application to confirm volume functionality

  1. CLI - pxctl clouddrive

  2. CLI - pxctl license

  3. CLI Reference

  4. StorageCluster

  5. Upgrade Portworx Enterprise

Exam Domain 2: Operations and Administration (Weightage: 25%)

Exam Objectives

Applicable Documentation and Resources

2.01 - Manage Portworx node and storage capacity scaling operations

Objective Subtopics:

  • Expand Portworx pools or nodes to increase capacity; reduce or decommission resources as needed

  • Differentiate between adding disks and expanding existing ones

  1. Expand your storage pool size with disks managed by Portworx

  2. Expand your storage pool size

  3. Expand your storage pool size with disks not managed by Portworx

  4. How Portworx controls the storage nodes in a cluster

2.02 - Manage and provision storage resources in Kubernetes

Objective Subtopics:

  • Configure StorageClasses for dynamic volume provisioning and replication

  • Apply VolumePlacementStrategy rules and tune I/O profiles for workload performance

  • Create shared and replicated volumes per application needs

  1. Sharedv4 Volumes

  2. Kubernetes Persistent volumes

  3. Configure IO profiles for Portworx volumes

  4. Volume Placement Strategies

  5. Create Sharedv4 PVCs

2.03 - Verify cluster configuration and status using Portworx and Kubernetes CLI

Objective Subtopics:

  • Use pxctl status and Kubernetes commands to confirm provisioning success and cluster state

  • Validate node membership, pool availability, and version consistency

  1. Troubleshooting tips for common problem areas

  2. Kubernetes operations

  3. Monitor Clusters on Kubernetes

2.04 - Use Portworx CLI to manage and diagnose cluster performance

Objective Subtopics:

  • Review Portworx logs and CLI outputs to locate performance bottlenecks

  • Trace connectivity to backend storage and identify alert indicators

  1. Collecting diagnostics - On-demand diagnostics

  2. CLI - pxctl service

  3. Expand your storage pool size

  4. Troubleshoot - Set log level to debug mode

  5. Running pxctl upgrade

2.05 - Configure and use Portworx components including Stork, Autopilot, and Telemetry

Objective Subtopics:

  • Manage Autopilot rules for automated scaling

  • Configure Stork webhooks for scheduling and PVC operations

  • Enable and monitor telemetry data in Pure1 for ongoing cluster insight

  1. Use Stork with Portworx

  2. Volume Placement Strategies

  3. Expanding your Storage Pool with Autopilot

  4. Working with Autopilot Rules

  5. Monitoring Autopilot Rules

  6. Autopilot Install and Setup

2.06 - Execute and verify Portworx upgrade procedures

Objective Subtopics:

  • Perform upgrades using the Portworx Operator or ConfigMap

  • Handle air-gapped environments and verify version alignment after upgrade

  1. Smart upgrade

  2. Upgrade using the Blue-Green Method

  3. Upgrade Portworx Clusters using the Operator

  4. Create a version manifet configmap for Portworx Operator

  5. Upgrade Portworx Cluster

  6. Upgrade an Air-Gapped Portworx Cluster

Exam Domain 3: Security (Weightage: 10%)

Exam Objectives

Applicable Documentation and Resources

3.01 - Implement and manage PX-Security to enforce authentication and authorization controls

Objective Subtopics:

  • Enable PX-Security and verify authentication via pxctl commands

  • Assign roles and permissions for users and Stork operations

  • Audit access logs after enabling security

  1. Configure PX-Security on your cluster

  2. Enable authorization in Portworx

  3. Use pxctl with security enabled

3.02 - Configure and use encrypted volumes to protect data at rest

Objective Subtopics:

  • Configure encrypted volumes using Kubernetes Secrets or Vault

  • Ensure identical keys across replicated or DR clusters

  • Verify encryption behavior in Metro DR deployments

  1. Encrypt Portworx Volumes

  2. Encrypting PVCs using annotations with Kubernetes Secrets

  3. Encryption with CSI

3.03 - Manage certificates, secret stores, and secure communications for Portworx

Objective Subtopics:

  • Enable TLS for internal KVDB and external ETCD or S3 stores

  • Manage certificate rotation and renewal

  • Validate secure communication between all Portworx components

  1. How to enable TLS for Internal KVDB

  2. How to enable TLS for Internal KVDB - Certificate rotation

Exam Domain 4: Observability and Troubleshooting (Weightage: 20%)

Exam Objectives

Applicable Documentation and Resources

4.01 - Monitor cluster health and capacity using Portworx Metrics and dashboards

Objective Subtopics:

  • Integrate with Prometheus and Grafana to visualize capacity and latency trends

  • Identify performance anomalies using collected metrics

  1. Autopilot Install and Setup

  2. Monitor Clusters on Kubernetes

  3. Grafana dashboards for Portworx

  4. Portworx Performance dashboard

  5. StorageCluster - Monitoring configuration

  6. Portworx Metrics for monitoring - volume stats

  7. Portworx Volume dashboard

4.02 - Configure and use Portworx alerts and monitoring

Objective Subtopics:

  • Configure alerting thresholds and escalation paths

  • Review and route alerts to monitoring or ticketing systems

  1. Create a service monitor

  2. View provided Prometheus rules

  3. Upgrade Portworx Enterprise

  4. Set up Alertmanager

  5. CLI - pxctl alerts

  6. CLI - pxctl service

4.03 - Identify and resolve common Portworx operational errors

Objective Subtopics:

  • Recognize frequent error patterns (e.g., lost KVDB nodes, full volumes)

  • Correlate logs to determine underlying causes

  • Validate network access to external KVDB and correct drive allocation issues

  • Generate and collect diagnostic bundles (pxctl diags)

  • Interpret log data and correlate with Pure1 alerts for troubleshooting

  • Debug node-level and pod-level issues in Portworx, Stork, and Autopilot

  • Use Kubernetes events and logs to pinpoint runtime failures

  1. Alerts and impacts when a pool reaches maximum capacity

  2. pxctl CLI reference

  3. Implications of a full pool

  4. StorageCluster Schema

  5. External KVDB for Portworx on Kubernetes

  6. Troubleshoot - Collect diagnostics

  7. StorageCluster - Autopilot configuration

Exam Domain 5: Data Management and Availability (Weightage: 25%)

Exam Objectives

Applicable Documentation and Resources

5.01 - Create, use, and manage lifecycle volume snapshots

Objective Subtopics:

  • Configure local and cloud snapshots based on recovery needs

  • Set up external object stores and VolumeSnapshot schedules

  • Implement group snapshots and rules for application-consistent backups

  1. Local Snapshots

  2. Scheduled Snapshots

  3. Create Snapshots in Portworx

  4. Cloud Snapshots

  5. 3D Snapshots

  6. CLI - storkctl get

5.02 - Backup or clone stateful applications and their volumes

Objective Subtopics:

  • Back up namespaces or entire clusters, including volume and object data

  • Exclude or restore specific resources as required

  • Clone namespaces for testing or migration

  1. Migration with Stork

  2. Stateful application storage operations

5.03 - Configure and manage Portworx DR

Objective Subtopics:

  • Configure PX-DR ClusterPairs and validate replication settings

  • Distinguish between asynchronous and Metro DR scenarios

  • Confirm prerequisite connectivity and authentication

  1. CLI - storkctl get

  2. Synchronous Disaster Recovery

  3. Asynchronous DR - Create a ClusterPair

  4. Synchronous DR - Create a ClusterPair

5.04 - Perform migrations between Portworx clusters

Objective Subtopics:

  • Use PX-Migrate to transfer data and apps across clusters

  • Establish and validate ClusterPairs for migration workflows

  • Verify post-migration data integrity and application recovery

  1. Migration with Stork

  2. Migration