How to Pass the Red Hat OpenShift EX288 Exam on Your First Attempt

Key takeaways

• EX288 tests application development and deployment on OpenShift. Storage for OpenShift is a different subject, covered by OpenShift Data Foundation (DO370).
• It is a performance-based exam: you complete tasks on live systems, and there are no multiple-choice questions.
• The associated course is DO288. Containers and Kubernetes basics (DO180 level) and Linux skills are the foundation.
• Speed with the oc command and with YAML matters as much as knowledge. Practise under time pressure.
• Red Hat sets the exam duration, price, objectives and validity and changes them. Confirm everything on the official exam page before booking.

What is the EX288 exam?

EX288 is the Red Hat Certified Specialist in OpenShift Application Development exam. It checks that you can build, deploy and manage containerised applications on Red Hat OpenShift as a developer. The related Red Hat course is DO288, Red Hat OpenShift Development II: Containerizing Applications.

EX288 is about application development, not OpenShift Container Storage, and like Red Hat's other EX exams it is hands-on rather than multiple choice. For the related exams, see the table below.

Exam facts to check on Red Hat's page

The earlier article quoted a 180-minute duration, a number of questions, a fee in rupees plus GST and a three-year validity. Red Hat changes these details, and they differ by country and exam version, so verify each on the Red Hat Training and Certification pages and the EX288 exam page before you plan or pay:

• Duration and format. The earlier text gave 180 minutes. Confirm it, and confirm whether the exam is taken at a test centre or remotely.
• Fee. Red Hat prices exams per country and adds tax locally, so ask for a current quote.
• Validity. Red Hat certifications are generally valid for a limited number of years; confirm the current period and renewal rules.
• Objectives. Read the published objective list and tick off each line. It is the closest thing to an official syllabus.
• OpenShift version. The exam is based on a specific OpenShift 4.x release. Practise on the same version.

What skills does EX288 test?

Red Hat publishes the exact objectives and updates them with each version, so treat this as an outline of the areas to expect, not as the official list.

• Working with containers and images: build images from a Containerfile, manage images in a registry, understand image streams.
• Building applications: Source-to-Image (S2I) builds, build configurations, triggers and build logs.
• Deploying and updating: deployments, rolling updates, rollbacks, scaling.
• Configuration and secrets: config maps and secrets used as environment variables or mounted files.
• Health and resources: readiness, liveness and startup probes; requests, limits and quotas.
• Networking: services and routes, including secured routes.
• Storage for applications: persistent volume claims used by your pods.
• Packaging and templates: templates and possibly Helm charts or Kustomize, depending on the version. Check the current objectives.
• Troubleshooting: reading logs and events, debugging pods and fixing failed builds and rollouts.

Prerequisites

You should be comfortable with Linux on the command line and know containers, ideally at the level of the Podman course (see our DO188 containers with Podman and DO180 containers, Kubernetes and OpenShift courses). Know basic Kubernetes objects: pods, deployments, services and config maps. Red Hat lists its own recommended prerequisites for DO288, so check them. Our tips for the CKA, CKAD and CKS exams also apply to the skills of working quickly with Kubernetes.

How to prepare: a six-week plan

The pace should fit your experience. If you already work with Kubernetes daily, shorten it. If containers are new, add weeks at the start.

Commands to practise until they are automatic

This is a practice set for your own cluster or lab. Replace names with your own.

oc login -u developer https://api.cluster.example.com:6443
oc new-project demo
oc new-app --name myapp https://git.example.com/team/app.git # builds with S2I or a Containerfile
oc get builds, pods, svc, route
oc logs -f build/myapp-1
oc start-build myapp --follow
oc expose service myapp # creates a route
oc create configmap app-config --from-literal=MODE=prod
oc create secret generic app-secret --from-literal=password=changeme
oc set env deployment/myapp --from=configmap/app-config
oc set probe deployment/myapp --readiness --get-url=http://:8080/healthz
oc set resources deployment/myapp --requests=cpu=100m, memory=128Mi --limits=cpu=500m, memory=256Mi
oc scale deployment/myapp --replicas=3
oc rollout status deployment/myapp
oc rollout undo deployment/myapp
oc describe pod POD_NAME
oc get events --sort-by=.lastTimestamp
oc explain deployment.spec.strategy

Learn oc explain early. Having the API field list at hand is faster than searching any other documentation during an exam. Practise the Red Hat OpenShift documentation navigation too, since you may be allowed to use documentation provided on the exam system; confirm the rules for your exam.

Where to practise

• A lab provided by your training provider. Instructor-led courses, including ours, usually include cluster access.
• A local single-node OpenShift (OpenShift Local) if your machine has enough memory.
• Red Hat's free Developer Sandbox for OpenShift, which is suited to application tasks, though its permissions are restricted. Check its current terms.

Exam-day strategy

• Read the whole task first. Names, namespaces, image tags and labels are specified exactly. A typo in a name can cost the whole task.
• Do the sure marks first, then the longer tasks. Do not sink 30 minutes into one build.
• Use oc to generate YAML with --dry-run=client -o yaml, edit it, and apply it. It is faster and safer than writing from scratch.
• Verify every task from the user's side: does the route respond with curl, does the pod reach Ready, does the config map value appear in the environment?
• Do not break earlier work. Changing shared settings for a later task can fail an earlier one.
• Stay calm on failures. Read the event and log output. Most errors are a typo, a missing secret or an image pull problem, and the message says which.
• Keep ten minutes at the end for a final check of everything.

Common mistakes

• Preparing for the wrong exam. Storage topics belong to DO370, not EX288.
• Reading about OpenShift without building anything.
• Relying on the web console only. The exam rewards command-line speed.
• Forgetting that a route needs a service that selects running pods.
• Not testing after a change, assuming it worked.

Next steps

Download the official objective list, mark each item as red, amber or green, and spend your first week on the reds. For instructor-led preparation with a live cluster, see our DO288 Red Hat OpenShift Developer course. If you plan to administer clusters as well, the DO280 OpenShift Administration course is the natural next step.

Related reading

• Important Tips to Clear CCNA Exam in First Attempt
• How to Pass the RHCSA EX200 Exam in Your First Attempt (2026)