My Journey to Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)

Kubernetes or famously called K8s is one of the most popular open-source container orchestration platform that one should know, specially knowing the benefits of containerizing your application enabling micro service, scaling and easy deployment.

I am writing this article to share my CKA preparation journey, exam experience, tips…and why Kubernetes in the first place, so please do read and let me know your thoughts and feedback.

What’s CKA?

CKA is Certified Kubernetes Administrator which focuses on admin skills to design, create, manage and troubleshoot Kubernetes clusters.

Why CKA?

As a Devops/SRE in my organization, we have developed few applications for automation, monitoring etc… and one of the key application is running on bare metal servers with complex design and flow, making it hard to deploy features and maintenance was a challenge with aeging servers, so we did a redesign and containerized, settled on Kubernetes for orchestration and Ansible for automation.
I had to do the design of the cluster and fit in all the pieces and tie all loose ends, all this happened while I already started to learn Kubernetes(Great timing) so finishing with CKA made sense for me.

Exam Fee and Registration:

Kubernetes is maintained by CNCF(Cloud Native Computing Foundation), CKA exam fee is $375 and you get one free retake, but CNCF usually provide lot of discounts over time such as 25%, 50% so you can register when such offer is available and cool thing is the validity, it’s 1 year… which means you can sit for exam within one year of paying the fee, and hey of course there is 1 free retake(it’s a pure gold considering how expensive this cert is!)

You can register for the exam from here.

Exam curriculum:

Refer to https://www.cncf.io/certification/cka/ as it keeps updating.

Exam Preparation:

There are many resources available in the market and there is no harm in picking anything as long as you are understanding the basic concepts and there is lab to practise what you learn (NO LAB, NO WIN — — it’s that simple)

I picked Mumshad Mannambeth CKA course from kodekloud(Hey…we studied in the same college and he is 1 year senior, so I know him and his brilliance from long ;) )

Kodekloud is a great platform, provides excellent theory for core concepts and solid labs for hands-on. The labs are exceptional as you can practice as many times as you want, as long as you want …. absolutely! Yes….too good! I know!. Mumshad Mannambeth teaching skills are amazing and I can’t recommend enough! Just AMAZING!!

While Reading I had lot of hand written notes(Yes — I used a PEN and a BOOK) which I think was super crucial for me in the long run as I was able to revise everyday before going to next topic which helped in retaining lot of topics.

Note: of course, notes can be digital notes as well, doesn’t matter as long as it is available for you to refer. I always go with hand written notes as it’s my thing and things stick if I write, so choose what fits and works for you.

And while Practicing labs I made bookmarks for each topic from kubernetes.io, there are several bookmarks you can simply download from google but I suggest, strongly suggest to make your own and use for all your practise/labs as this helps you in the exam to quickly jump to documentation without searching.

I also practised:

Kubernetes The Hardway using vagrant and virtualbox(Thanks to my old laptop)
https://labs.play-with-k8s.com/# is a great free lab setup.
https://www.katacoda.com/courses/kubernetes/playground another free lab setup

And I moved to a very important step — KILLER.SH(when you register for the exam you will get 2 sessions for FREE).
The questions were much harder in killer.sh as compared to the real exam!
Once you start the session, there are 25 questions and a console active for 36 hours to practice, I focused to complete as many questions as possible under 2 hours to get an idea on my speed, but LOL I was only able to complete 14 questions in 2hours(but it wasn’t bad at all :) ) so after completing remaining questions I got the answer report (which will have detailed explanation of every problem, a great learning) and I did review all the answers and explanations carefully and practiced unclear topics.

AND, I scheduled the exam.

Just 1 day before the actual exam I activated the 2nd session of killer.sh and this time I was able to finish all 25 questions under 2 hours (and It’s really tiring and I didn’t like the feeling of rushed, but it helps in hte exam) but that speed made me commit 2 silly mistakes, though I got a high score which is a confidence booster(Hey! ….Confidence MATTERS!!)

And I felt ready for the EXAM!!

Exam experience and Tips:

Saturday 10:15 PM, I gave the exam online from home, the proctor was readily online on-time and did all the necessary checks based on the protocols

• You are allowed to use dual screens — I loved it!
• You are allowed to open kubernetes.io in one window(Only 1 window is allowed), and another one for exam — so, you can do either 2 TABS in 1 browser window or 2 browser windows with no TAB.
• I was using MAC, so command + C for copy and command + V for paste from documentation to exam terminal.
• There is a clickable copy available from question window to terminal, this saves time.

My overall experience with the exam was very smooth, no disconnections, no technical hurdles, nothing whatsoever that worried me! PSI did a good job here!

I was able to finish all questions well on time and even had the luxury to re-verify all the answers.

Result will be available in 24 Hours after the exam, I managed a score of 90 out of 100.

Based on my overall experience, I want to list down few TIPS that might help

• Alias k for kubeclt and autocomplete is already setup/provided in all the clusters, so don’t worry.
• Always, always ensure to switch to the respective context provided for each question
• Always, always ensure to switch back to the command console if you ssh to any node
• Follow the instructions in the question carefully, consider the namespaces PLEASE! as you can easily miss to create something in needed namespace and create in a default namespace.
• If you are stuck, flag it and move ahead — there might be easy questions later and you need only 66% to pass.
• I believe there are partial marks as well, so DO what you can. Even if you can’t complete full scenario of a particular question, that’s ok. You will still win some points. So DONT skip any Question!
• Time management is IMPORTANT, but if you practise well and know kubernetes.io and your bookmarks, there is no need to RUSH, time will be enough to complete all questions.

Checkout this flow for exam, if it helps:

One last TIP — PRACTISE, PRACTISE and PRACTISE MORE!

My suggestion to everyone who is taking any exam:

If your effort and preparation is good, and if you are feeling not ready, you are actually READY. If you are feeling ready, you are actually more than READY, so always GO FOR IT! and YOU CAN DO IT!

Last but not least — Rest well on the day of exam, and start with a fresh mind. It’s an exam day so dedicate it for that!

I hope this info is helpful, and ALL the BEST!, ALWAYS BE CURIOUS and BEGINNERS MIND!

Finally, feel free to connect with me via LinkedIn: Bharath Atluri

Thank you!