- What the 11 Content Areas Actually Are
- How the EX288 Exam Is Delivered
- Domains 1-3: Platform, Multi-Container Apps and Images
- Domains 4-5: Troubleshooting Builds and Image Streams
- Domains 6-7: Configuration, Secrets and S2I
- Domains 8-11: Hooks, Triggers, Templates, Pipelines and Operators
- Domain-by-Domain Planning Table
- Sequencing Your Preparation Around the Domains
- Version Details and Source Conflicts to Know About
- Who Uses This Credential
- Frequently Asked Questions
- Red Hat's EX288 page lists 11 objective headings, but publishes no percentage weights, so do not trust any "domain weighting" chart.
- The exam is performance-based on a live OpenShift environment and runs 4 hours.
- The current public exam page specifies OpenShift Container Platform 4.22; confirm the version on your exact booking.
- Your configurations must persist through the normal platform lifecycle without intervention, so verify work after restarts and rebuilds.
What the 11 Content Areas Actually Are
The Red Hat Certified Advanced Developer in Cloud-native Applications exam, code EX288, tests whether you can build, deploy, configure and troubleshoot applications on Red Hat OpenShift. Red Hat's current public exam page lists 11 top-level objective headings. This guide walks through each one, explains what hands-on work it implies, and shows how to sequence your preparation around them.
A point worth stating plainly: these 11 items are the issuer's objective headings, not percentage-weighted domains. Red Hat does not publish official weights, and it does not name a highest-weighted objective. Any article, video or forum post claiming "Domain 7 is 20% of the exam" is inventing a number. Treat all 11 areas as fair game and plan accordingly.
If you are new to the credential itself, start with What Is EX288 Certification? for the background, then return here for the objective-level detail. For a broader preparation plan that wraps around these domains, the EX288 Study Guide 2026: How to Pass on Your First Attempt is the companion piece.
How the EX288 Exam Is Delivered
Before diving into the domains, understand the delivery model, because it shapes how you should practice each objective.
- Format: performance-based tasks on a live Red Hat OpenShift environment. This is not a multiple-choice question bank. You are given tasks and you make the cluster and your application resources reach a specified end state.
- Duration: 4 hours on the current EX288 page.
- Task count: Red Hat does not publicly specify the number of tasks or the scored/unscored breakdown.
- Scoring: final configurations are assessed against objective criteria. A numeric passing threshold was not verified on the current exam page or program guide, and third-party claims such as 210/300 or 300/500 are not issuer-confirmed. See EX288 Passing Score 2026: Exactly What You Need to Pass for how to reason about this uncertainty.
- Reference material: relevant product documentation is supplied; outside assistance is prohibited.
- Persistence: configurations and services must persist through the normal platform lifecycle without intervention.
- Delivery: Red Hat administers its own proctored remote, individual testing-station and classroom examinations, subject to availability for the exact exam you want. Remote delivery requires compatible equipment and proctoring under the booked exam's technical rules.
The persistence requirement deserves emphasis. A route that works only until a pod restarts, or a secret mounted by a manual patch that a rebuild wipes out, will not count. Every domain below should be practiced with that end-state mindset: make the change in the right resource, then confirm it survives.
Domains 1-3: Platform, Multi-Container Apps and Images
Domain 1: Work with Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform
The foundation for everything else. You must be fluent with the oc command line and the core object model, because every other objective builds on it.
- Log in, switch projects, and inspect resources with
oc get,oc describeandoc explain - Create applications and the resources they generate: deployments, services, routes
- Expose services externally with routes and understand how routes map to services
- Read logs and events quickly; they are your fastest diagnostic path
- Use
oc explainand the supplied documentation instead of memorizing every YAML field
Domain 2: Deploy multi-container applications
Real applications are rarely a single container. This objective covers wiring together components such as an application tier and a backing service, or adding auxiliary containers to a workload.
- Deploy an application together with its database or other dependency, and connect them through services
- Understand how multiple containers in a pod share networking and volumes
- Pass connection details between components using configuration, not hard-coded values
- Confirm that dependent services come up in a usable state, not merely "Running"
Domain 3: Work with container images in OpenShift Container Platform
Images are the unit of delivery. Expect to pull, reference, build and manage them within the cluster's registry model.
- Reference images from internal and external registries and understand how image references resolve
- Work with image tags and how a tag moves over time
- Understand how images feed builds and deployments
- Handle images that require pull credentials
These three areas are the "can you operate the platform" layer. Candidates who skip deliberate practice here often lose time later, because slow oc habits cost minutes on every task. Time is one of the main difficulty drivers; the How Hard Is the EX288 Exam? Complete Difficulty Guide 2026 covers where candidates tend to struggle.
Domains 4-5: Troubleshooting Builds and Image Streams
Domain 4: Troubleshoot application builds and deployment issues
This is the objective most likely to reward real experience. You will be handed something broken and expected to find out why.
- Read build logs and identify the failing phase: source fetch, assemble, push, or later
- Diagnose pods stuck in image pull errors, crash loops, or pending states
- Check events, pod status and resource definitions to locate misconfiguration
- Fix the root cause in the correct resource so the fix persists, instead of patching a live pod
Domain 5: Work with image streams
Image streams are an OpenShift-specific abstraction that decouples builds and deployments from the underlying registry location. They trip up candidates who come from plain Kubernetes.
- Understand what an image stream and its tags represent, and how they reference images
- Import images into an image stream and update tags
- Connect builds and deployments to image streams so changes propagate
- Recognize how image stream changes interact with triggers (see Domain 8)
Domains 6-7: Configuration, Secrets and S2I
Domain 6: Work with configuration maps and secrets
Applications need configuration and credentials that live outside the image. This objective tests whether you can inject them correctly.
- Create config maps and secrets from literals and files
- Inject values as environment variables and as mounted files
- Know the difference in how updates propagate to environment variables versus mounted volumes
- Use secrets for pull credentials, application passwords and similar sensitive data
- Reference config maps and secrets from deployment definitions so the wiring persists
Domain 7: Work with the source-to-image (S2I) framework
S2I builds a runnable image directly from application source code and a builder image. It is central to the OpenShift developer experience.
- Create applications from source repositories using a builder image
- Understand the assemble and run phases and how builder images are structured
- Customize S2I behavior, for example through environment variables or script overrides
- Diagnose S2I build failures using build logs
- Select the appropriate builder image and version for a given language runtime
S2I and build troubleshooting overlap heavily, which is why a single practice session often touches Domains 4, 5 and 7 at once. For a one-page refresher on the commands and flags you will reuse most, see the EX288 Cheat Sheet 2026: One-Page Review of Must-Know Facts.
Domains 8-11: Hooks, Triggers, Templates, Pipelines and Operators
Domain 8: Work with build hooks and build triggers
This objective covers how builds start and what can happen around them.
- Configure build triggers so builds start automatically on image or configuration changes
- Understand webhook-based triggers from source repositories
- Use build hooks, such as post-commit hooks, to run commands after a build step
- Inspect a build configuration to see which triggers are active and why a build did or did not fire
Domain 9: Work with templates
Templates package a set of resources with parameters so an application can be created repeatedly with different inputs.
- Process and instantiate templates with parameter values
- Read a template to understand which objects it creates and which parameters it expects
- Create or modify a template from existing resources
- Troubleshoot parameter substitution problems
Domain 10: Work with OpenShift Pipelines
OpenShift Pipelines provides Kubernetes-native CI/CD. This objective tests whether you can define and run pipelines that build and deploy applications.
- Understand the relationship between tasks, pipelines and the runs that execute them
- Create or modify pipelines that build an image and deploy the result
- Pass parameters and workspaces to pipeline components
- Start a pipeline run and read its results to find failures
Domain 11: Work with Operators accessible for users to run in their applications
The wording here is specific: this is about Operators that a developer can consume to run in their applications, not about administering the Operator framework cluster-wide.
- Find and use Operator-provided services available to your project
- Create instances of Operator-managed resources, such as a database or messaging service, through their custom resources
- Connect your application to the service the Operator provisions
- Verify the provisioned service is healthy before pointing the application at it
Key Takeaway
Domains 8 through 11 are about automation and reuse. Candidates who only practice one-off manual deployments tend to be underprepared here. Rehearse each as a repeatable, declarative workflow: triggers fire, templates instantiate cleanly, pipelines run end to end, and Operator-managed services come up without manual repair.
Domain-by-Domain Planning Table
Use this table to plan practice sessions. The "practice focus" column reflects the hands-on skills implied by each objective heading, not any official weighting.
| # | Objective heading | Practice focus |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Work with Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform | Fast, accurate oc usage; projects, deployments, services, routes |
| 2 | Deploy multi-container applications | App plus backing service; wiring via services and configuration |
| 3 | Work with container images in OpenShift Container Platform | Image references, tags, registries, pull credentials |
| 4 | Troubleshoot application builds and deployment issues | Build logs, pod states, events, root-cause fixes |
| 5 | Work with image streams | Import, tag, and link image streams to builds and deployments |
| 6 | Work with configuration maps and secrets | Create and inject as env vars and volumes |
| 7 | Work with the source-to-image (S2I) framework | Source builds, builder images, assemble/run customization |
| 8 | Work with build hooks and build triggers | Trigger types, webhooks, post-commit hooks |
| 9 | Work with templates | Parameters, processing, creating templates |
| 10 | Work with OpenShift Pipelines | Tasks, pipelines, runs, parameters, workspaces |
| 11 | Work with Operators accessible for users to run in their applications | Consuming Operator-managed services via custom resources |
Sequencing Your Preparation Around the Domains
One short note on ordering, tied to how these objectives depend on one another. Build foundations first, then layer automation on top. A sensible progression looks like this:
Platform and images
- Domains 1, 2 and 3:
ocfluency, multi-container deployments, image handling - Goal: perform routine deployments quickly without consulting notes
Builds, image streams and configuration
- Domains 5, 6 and 7: image streams, config maps and secrets, S2I
- Then Domain 4: deliberately break these and practice diagnosing the failures
Automation and services
- Domains 8, 9, 10 and 11: triggers, templates, pipelines, Operator-managed services
- Finish with full-length timed runs that combine all 11 areas under the 4-hour limit
Troubleshooting (Domain 4) is placed after the building blocks because you cannot diagnose what you have never built. Because the exam is hands-on, pair reading with lab time on a real cluster. For the training side of this, including Red Hat's recommended DO180, DO188 and DO288 courses, see EX288 Training. Recommended training is not a mandatory eligibility requirement; the details are in EX288 Requirements 2026: Eligibility, Prerequisites & How to Qualify.
When you want realistic practice against the objective headings, the EX288 practice test site is built to reinforce exactly this kind of domain-by-domain review.
Version Details and Source Conflicts to Know About
Honest preparation means knowing where the public information disagrees. Several points are worth flagging:
- Exam version: the current public exam page specifies OpenShift Container Platform 4.22. Multiple versions can coexist, and the version-specific objectives linked from Red Hat's learning system were not retrieved for this guide, so do not assume this scope covers every bookable version. Confirm the version on your exact booking.
- Course versions do not override the exam version: the DO288 course page also says 4.22, but the DO289 course-with-exam page still says 4.18. Treat course version labels as preparation context, not as proof of what your exam uses.
- Third-party metadata: a public Udemy listing updated in August 2026 still states 4.18 and three hours. That conflicts with Red Hat's 4-hour exam page. It is third-party preparation metadata, not exam authority. Likewise, training-session hours advertised by course providers are not exam duration.
- Results timing: the exam page says results are usually available within 3 US business days and reported as total scores, while the general program guide says within 5 business days with objective-area feedback. Neither provides individual exam-item feedback. This inconsistency is unresolved in the sources.
Validity and renewal
The credential is current for 3 years. Red Hat's dated May 2026 FAQ describes renewal by retaking the highest-level exam, adding a certification at the same level, or advancing to a higher level within its framework, and the program guide also supports retaking the original exam. The older renewal landing page still says Specialist credentials can only be renewed by retaking their respective exams and uses "non-current" rather than "expiration" language. These official sources do not fully agree, so check the applicable rules in your own transcript before relying on any single route. Retaking EX288 is the common verified route. No EX288-specific CEU quota or CEU-only renewal option is published.
Who Uses This Credential
EX288 is aimed at developers who build and ship applications on OpenShift, so the relevant roles cluster around application development, platform engineering and DevOps teams running containerized workloads. The domains map closely onto day-to-day responsibilities in those jobs: builds and image handling, configuration management, CI/CD pipelines and consuming platform services. For a view of how employers frame these roles, see EX288 Jobs. For compensation and value questions, the EX288 Salary Guide 2026: Complete Earnings Analysis and Is the EX288 Certification Worth It? Complete ROI Analysis 2026 address those directly. This guide deliberately avoids quoting salary or pass-rate figures, since Red Hat does not publish an aggregate pass rate and individual anecdotes do not establish one; EX288 Pass Rate 2026: What the Data Shows explains what can and cannot be said.
To test yourself against all 11 areas under time pressure, try the full-length scenarios on the practice test platform.
Frequently Asked Questions
Red Hat's current exam page lists 11 top-level objective headings, from working with OpenShift Container Platform through working with Operators available to users. These are objective headings, not percentage-weighted domains, and Red Hat publishes no official weights.
None is identified. Red Hat does not publish percentage weights or name a highest-weighted objective, so any specific weighting claim you see elsewhere is not issuer-confirmed. Prepare for all 11 areas.
No. It is performance-based: you complete hands-on tasks on a live Red Hat OpenShift environment over 4 hours. The exact task count and scored/unscored breakdown are not publicly specified.
The current public exam page specifies OpenShift Container Platform 4.22. Because multiple versions can coexist and course pages show differing versions, confirm the version for your exact booking rather than assuming.
No EX188 prerequisite for sitting EX288 was verified. Red Hat recommends DO180, DO188 and DO288 and review of the objectives, but recommended training is not a mandatory requirement. EX188 and EX288 together are required for the separate Engineer in Cloud-native Applications path.