Overview
The Red Hat Certified Specialist in Building Resilient Microservices exam (EX328) measures the skills required to create and manage a resilient microservices mesh by using Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform and Red Hat OpenShift Service Mesh. The focus is on the practical use of Service Mesh to operate and protect an application made up of multiple microservices with persistent storage.
By passing this exam, you become a Red Hat Certified Specialist in Building Resilient Microservices, and the credential also counts toward earning Red Hat Certified Architect (RHCA®).
Objectives for this exam are based on the most recent Red Hat product version available.
Who should attend
- Administrators or architects in a DevOps role who manage a Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform environment
- Administrators or architects in a DevOps role who implement a Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform environment
- Application developers who manage multiple microservices or support an existing set of microservices on Red Hat OpenShift Container Platform
Prerequisites
The prerequisites for this exam include practical knowledge of Red Hat OpenShift applications, such as the skills taught in Red Hat OpenShift Developer II: Building and Deploying Cloud-native Applications (DO288) and Building Resilient Microservices with Istio and Red Hat OpenShift Service Mesh (DO328).
Specifically, candidates should be able to:
- Create and work with multiple Red Hat OpenShift projects
- Deploy applications
- Work with container images
- Work with Kubernetes resources written in JSON or YAML
- Understand Kubernetes Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs)
Preparation
Red Hat recommends preparing with Building Resilient Microservices with Istio and Red Hat OpenShift Service Mesh (DO328) and Red Hat OpenShift Developer II: Building and Deploying Cloud-native Applications (DO288). Earning the Red Hat Certified Specialist in OpenShift Application Development (EX288) is also recommended. Attendance in these courses is not required; students may choose to take only the exam.
While attending Red Hat training can be an important part of exam preparation, it does not guarantee success. Previous experience, hands-on practice, and natural aptitude also play an important role.
Many books and other resources for Red Hat products are available. Red Hat does not officially endorse any of them as exam preparation guides. However, additional reading may still be useful to deepen your understanding.
Product Description
As part of this exam, you should be able to perform tasks in the following areas:
Work with Red Hat OpenShift Service Mesh custom resources
- Understand and use Red Hat OpenShift Service Mesh custom resources
Deploy and configure applications on Service Mesh
- Add sidecars manually to pod-based applications
- Configure automatic sidecar injection by using annotations
- Understand how mesh member and external service network policies are configured
Manage request routing and traffic control
- Configure static and dynamic request routing for different application versions
- Understand release and deployment strategies supported by Red Hat OpenShift Service Mesh, including A/B testing and canary releases
- Configure advanced routing to control traffic flow and API calls between services
- Implement percentage-based traffic splits for staged rollouts
- Use traffic mirroring for shadow or dark-launch style testing
Control ingress and egress traffic
- Route inbound and outbound traffic through the mesh
- Define and manage gateway entry points for incoming traffic
- Enable controlled access from the mesh to externally accessible services
Configure resilience and fault tolerance
- Apply timeout settings to control response waiting times
- Configure retries to improve service availability
- Use circuit breaker patterns to protect overloaded or failing services
- Configure connection pool, load balancing, and ejection policies
Work with Service Mesh policy checks
- Configure policy-based enforcement features
- Set local and global rate limits
- Define quotas and access controls
- Configure allow and deny authorization policies for workloads
Secure service-to-service communication
- Understand workload-to-workload authentication and authorization in Service Mesh
- Configure secure service-to-service communication
- Use mutual TLS (mTLS) between services
- Map service identities with secure naming
- Define peer authentication policies to enforce mTLS
- Configure end-user authentication checks
- Define authorization rules for service and end-user access to workloads
Use fault injection and chaos testing mechanisms
- Introduce delays to simulate latency or overloaded services
- Inject error responses and TCP failures to test recovery behavior
Exam format
This exam is a hands-on practical exam focused on real-world development tasks. Internet access is not available during the exam, and hard copy or electronic notes are not permitted. Product documentation made available within the exam environment may be used.
This exam consists of a single section lasting three hours.
Scores and reporting
Official scores are issued only through Red Hat Certification Central. Red Hat does not authorize examiners or training partners to communicate results directly to candidates. Scores are typically reported within 3 U.S. business days.
Results are provided as total scores only. Red Hat does not disclose item-level performance or provide additional breakdowns on request.