How to Pass the PCA Exam

PCA-specific tips and the most common pitfalls.

PCA exam tips

• For PromQL questions, work through the query transformation mentally: select → filter by labels → aggregate. This process eliminates most distractors.
• Histogram vs summary questions often trip candidates. Remember: histograms are aggregatable across instances; summaries are not.
• Know the difference between Pushgateway (short-lived jobs) and standard scraping. Questions often present a scenario and ask which model fits.
• Grafana questions focus on panel types and datasource configuration, not deep Grafana internals.

Common PCA pitfalls

• Treating PromQL as purely conceptual — the exam asks you to read and interpret real queries. Practice writing queries, not just reading definitions.
• Confusing histogram and summary semantics — they look similar but have important aggregation differences that are directly tested.