What is the OpenStack COA?

Certified OpenStack Administrator (COA) is the first professional certification offered by the OpenStack Foundation. It’s designed to help companies identify top talent in the industry, and help job seekers demonstrate their skills. The COA program was launched in April 2016.

What does it mean when a candidate has passed the COA exam?

A professional who has passed the COA has demonstrated competency in the foundational components of operating an OpenStack cloud. This includes OpenStack cloud components, identity, compute, object storage, networking, image management, orchestration and troubleshooting. See below for a more detailed list of topics covered in the exam.

How can I verify their exam certification?

All passing professionals receive a certification number. With their number and their last name, you can verify the COA certficate here.

Someone who has passed the COA exam has demonstrated their knowledge of:

• The components that make up an OpenStack cloud.
• How to use the OpenStack API/command-line interface.
• OpenStack identity management, including managing projects, services, and verifying operation.
• How to verify operation of the OpenStack dashboard.
• OpenStack compute services, including managing the full lifecycle of compute instances.
• OpenStack object storage, including managing access, object storage policies and managing permissions on a container in object storage.
• How to create and manage OpenStack block storage, including managing volume, quotas, verification and backups.
• How to create and manage OpenStack networking resources, networking services for virtual environments, security and troubleshooting.
• How to launch and use orchestration templates and verify its operation.
• How to deploy and manage a new image to an OpenStack instance.
• Common troubleshooting for OpenStack services including analyzing log files, database servers, network statuses and storage statuses.