Tips to ace CNCF’s Certified Kubernetes Administrator(CKA) exam

 I have recently attempted (and passed!!) CNCF’s Certified Kubernetes Administrator(CKA) exam and have decided to share my journey with this exam.

Why did I choose to attempt CKA exam? I am a DevOps engineer working for NetApp India, and we primarily focus on persistent storage and data-management aspect in K8s. I wanted to validate my knowledge with other K8s components, as I knew I would learn many new things which I can use in my current role to propose and implement new ideas. Preparation: CKA exam is hard, it has 24 practical questions. Each question has different weightage of marks. As part of preparation for CKA I referred following materials:- i) Kubernetes Documentation: This documentation is very helpful as it has proper examples of each resource type. Make sure you know where to find required YAML files for K8s resources on this site. 2) Kubernetes components: Make sure you know K8s architecture, all components in K8s as you will need to work with different components in the exam. 3) Kubernetes the Hard Way. Mr. Kelsey Hightower has done a great job with the K8s the hard way tutorial. This tutorial walks you through setting up all k8s components. This clears all your concepts regarding K8s and I personally believe that any K8s administrator should be knowing all the steps described by Mr. Kelsey. I would recommend anyone who is preparing to attempt CKA should try out this tutorial and bootstrap atleast 1 cluster before attempting the exam. 4) Candidate handbook: Take a look at the candidate handbook as it describes requirements, description of exam and rules followed in the exam. It will give you an overview of the exam.

5) Hands on Kubernetes: Play-with-K8s offers a fastest way to get an test k8s instance running, I used this environment to try out most of Kubernetes tasks listed in the documentation and it has really helped me out.

Tips which really helped me in the exam: 1) Kubectl CheatSheet: I recommend everyone to go through this document and practice all the commands mentioned in the cheatsheet. This document really helps in most of the questions in the exam. 2) Managing time: As the exam has 24 practical questions, it is very important to have a plan about how you will be solving maximum questions. On an average you get around 7minutes for each question. I would suggest you to read the question first, and if you think you cant complete it in 7–8 minutes you can keep a note of question number and move forward with the next questions. Also make sure you are fresh and hydrated before the exam. I personally observed that 3 hours is la little less time if you wish to attempt the entire exam. 3) dry-run and -oyaml These options are lifesaver both in the exam as well as in real life. I used these options to create required YAML’s quickly and then edit these yamls as per my requirements. This saved me a lot of time in the actual exam. 4) Using kubectl explain Kubectl explain will get documentation of the resource on your cli. This option is very helpful if you are unsure about certain fields/options for a particular resource. 6) Keep an eye on Kubernetes context: The exam questions are based on 6 different k8s clusters. On each question you will have to make sure you are in the right context. It won’t be helpful if you answer a question in a wrong context. 7) Keep a note of your marks. Each question in CKA exam has different weight-age. I would recommend you to keep a track of attempted questions and marks associated with these questions. This will help you make decisions on which questions at the end if you are running out of time.

Final Thoughts:- My K8s concepts became strong after attempting this exam as during preparation I practically tried out the features offered by K8s, in this process I got to learn about many features which I didn’t knew exist through K8s blogs. Although this is a tough exam it is not impossible to crack it just keep working hard and practicing I will recommend this exam to anyone who is extensively working with K8s.