Red Hat EX280 cheat sheet for projects, routes, operators, traps, and final review.
Use this cheat sheet for Red Hat Certified OpenShift Administrator (EX280) after you know the basics but before you start a timed practice block. The goal is not to memorize a vendor catalog; the goal is to classify the scenario and reject attractive wrong answers quickly.
For performance-based exams, treat this as a command-and-task triage sheet. It helps decide what to do first, but it does not replace live lab repetition.
Use this when the stem mixes OpenShift objects, routes, builds, RBAC, or rollout troubleshooting.
flowchart TD
S["Scenario"] --> O["Identify the OpenShift lane"]
O --> B["Check build, route, or deployment behavior"]
B --> A["Check automation, operators, or policies"]
A --> V["Verify rollout, logs, and recovery evidence"]
| Lane | Decision rule | Reject when |
|---|---|---|
| OpenShift architecture | Understand projects, routes, deployments, image streams, builds, operators, and cluster services. | Treating OpenShift exactly like upstream Kubernetes without platform-specific objects. |
| Workload management | Create, configure, scale, expose, update, and troubleshoot applications. | Editing resources without verifying route, service, selector, image, and rollout behavior. |
| Security and access | Use projects, RBAC, SCCs, service accounts, secrets, and image controls. | Granting broad cluster access or privileged containers to bypass a problem. |
| Operations and troubleshooting | Use oc commands, events, logs, probes, quotas, builds, and deployment status. | Ignoring build logs or events when an app fails to roll out. |
| Automation and integration | Use templates, operators, pipelines, GitOps or automation patterns where the exam requires them. | Manual one-off changes when repeatable automation is the point. |
| Trap | Better instinct |
|---|---|
| Kubernetes-only answer | Check for OpenShift objects such as routes, projects, builds, image streams, and SCCs. |
| No hands-on practice | Red Hat exams are performance-based; practice in an actual environment. |
| Wrong project context | Confirm oc project, namespace, and permissions before changing resources. |
| No verification | Use rollout status, route testing, logs, and events after each fix. |
| If the stem says | Start with |
|---|---|
| least privilege, private access, compliance, or audit | identity scope, data boundary, policy enforcement, logging, and ownership |
| least operational effort | managed service, native integration, simple workflow, and fewer moving parts |
| high availability, recovery, or outage | failure domain, recovery objective, health check, rollback, and validation |
| performance, scale, or cost | bottleneck evidence, traffic pattern, sizing, caching, batching, and quotas |
| troubleshoot, diagnose, or investigate | symptom, recent change, logs, metrics, status, dependency, and smallest safe test |
Use IT Mastery for objective recognition and scenario drills, then validate speed in the real performance environment.
Open the exact IT Mastery route here: EX280 on MasteryExamPrep.
Red Hat OpenShift pages are readiness aids, not full simulations. Practice every objective in the live product or lab.