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HashiCorp Nomad Associate Certification

Exam Overview

The HashiCorp Nomad Associate certification validates foundational knowledge and practical skills for deploying, operating, and consuming HashiCorp Nomad. Nomad is a simple and flexible workload orchestrator that runs containers, VMs, Java apps, native binaries, and more, scheduled across a fleet of machines on-prem, in the cloud, or at the edge.

The exam is aimed at platform engineers, SREs, application developers, and operators who use Nomad to schedule and manage workloads. It covers Nomad's architecture, job specifications in HCL, scheduling and allocations, service discovery and networking, storage and volumes, and ACL-based security.

Exam Code: Nomad Associate Exam Duration: 60 minutes Number of Questions: 57 questions Exam Format: Multiple choice and multi-select Passing Score: Approximately 70% (HashiCorp reports pass or fail) Cost: $70.50 USD Proctoring: PSI online proctoring Validity: 2 years Prerequisites: None. Recommended: 3 to 6 months of Nomad experience, basic Linux / containers knowledge

Who Should Take This Exam

  • Platform engineers running Nomad clusters (as an alternative to Kubernetes)
  • SREs operating mixed workloads (containers + VMs + batch jobs)
  • Application developers writing Nomad job specs
  • DevOps engineers integrating Nomad with Consul, Vault, and CI/CD
  • Engineers on hybrid/edge deployments where Nomad's simplicity shines over Kubernetes

Exam Domains (high-level)

  1. Nomad architecture and cluster concepts (approximately 20%)
  2. Job specification authoring in HCL (approximately 25%)
  3. Scheduling, allocations, and drivers (approximately 20%)
  4. Networking, service discovery, Consul integration (approximately 15%)
  5. Storage and volumes (CSI, host volumes) (approximately 10%)
  6. ACL security, federation, and operations (approximately 10%)

See fact-sheet.md for detailed topics per domain.

  • Linux fundamentals: processes, systemd, file permissions, networking
  • Docker basics: images, containers, ports, volumes
  • HCL familiarity (Terraform or Packer experience helps)
  • Optional but valuable: Consul familiarity for service discovery
  • Optional: Vault familiarity for secret integration
  • Basic CI/CD knowledge

Study Path

  1. Read fact-sheet.md to understand exam format.
  2. Work through notes in notes/ sequentially.
  3. Follow the week-by-week schedule in practice-plan.md.
  4. Review scenarios.md for real-world problem-solving.
  5. Use strategy.md close to exam day.

Hands-on Lab Requirements

Nomad labs are lightweight:

  • Nomad 1.7 or newer
  • Docker Desktop / Podman for the docker driver
  • A 3-node Nomad cluster (Docker Compose or 3 VMs)
  • Optional: Consul 1.17+ for service mesh labs
  • Optional: Vault 1.15+ for secrets labs
  • Cloud: free-tier works; a small Raspberry Pi cluster also fine

nomad agent -dev runs a single-node dev cluster in seconds for learning.

Official Resources

  • Nomad documentation: https://developer.hashicorp.com/nomad/docs
  • Nomad tutorials: https://developer.hashicorp.com/nomad/tutorials
  • Exam objectives: https://developer.hashicorp.com/certifications/infrastructure-automation
  • Nomad Pack (package manager): https://developer.hashicorp.com/nomad/tools/nomad-pack
  • HCP Nomad (if you prefer SaaS): in beta at the time of writing
  • "Nomad in Action" or the HashiCorp Learn Nomad track
  • Nomad's official example jobspecs repo on GitHub
  • Community meetup videos on YouTube ("HashiConf" channel)
  • Nomad GitHub repo for release notes and issue tracker

Recertification

Certification is valid for 2 years. Retake the current exam to recertify. Blueprint updates with each major Nomad version.

Common Pitfalls to Avoid

  • Treating Nomad like Kubernetes. Job spec is simpler but has different semantics.
  • Ignoring non-container task drivers. Nomad's value is also running exec, java, qemu.
  • Missing Consul integration content. Service discovery is key exam material.
  • Overlooking constraints and affinities. Scheduling nuances are tested.
  • Skipping ACL configuration. Security domain is a solid 10%.

Time Investment Estimate

  • 40 to 60 hours total
  • 3 to 4 weeks of part-time study
  • At least 15 hours of hands-on labs

Nomad vs Kubernetes

Quick mental model:

Aspect Nomad Kubernetes
Scope Workloads only Workloads + full platform (ingress, storage, RBAC, etc.)
Complexity One binary, simple operations Many components, steep learning curve
Workload types Docker, exec, java, qemu, raw_exec Containers primarily
Config HCL or JSON YAML
Installation Binary + systemd, 5 minutes Multi-hour or managed service
Edge Lightweight, single binary Heavy, often impractical

Nomad is ideal when you want a scheduler without the platform complexity, or when you need to schedule non-container workloads alongside containers.