Crack CKAD, CKA, CKS Exams— My Way.
“Education without application is just entertainment.” — Tim Sanders
My experience with K8S certification journey
I had my first tryst with this cool technology called Kubernetes four years back in 2017 while working on a DevOps project. I always wished to learn Kubernetes from that time onwards.
In 2020, I took a conscious effort to upgrade my basic Kubernetes skills to intermediate or advanced level (read as — just flirting to real love or marriage — whatever you call). As I go with learning for any new technology or tool, I start preparing for the CKAD certification. Certifications to me, bring accountability to the whole learning process (after all, some good money goes on the stake). I booked my CKAD exam in April 2020. To prepare effectively, I brushed my Kubernetes basics in around two weeks, then got deeper into CKAD topics for some good three weeks and finally revised key ideas and labs for a week or so. I was able to clear CKAD in May 2020. This gave me some really nice boost to my confidence and I started loving the lab based exam. After clearing CKAD I got really serious about K8S stuff and put some more money on the stake. Yes, I immediately booked my CKA exam (after clearing CKAD) but could sit only in April 2021 (one year of delay, wow that’s some long crazy time due to other commitments) and CKS in June 2021 (when some of my customers really grilled me on security around Containers and Kubernetes ).
Though, I managed to crack the CKAD exam in my first attempt (it was just near to the passing score, phew!), I improve my scores in CKA and CKS later in 2021. Honestly speaking, after clearing each K8S exam my love for lab based exams only rose higher. I felt lab based exams are always intellectually stimulating and challenging at the same time. Speed matters, accuracy matters and time matters, wow — that’s a lot of things to keep track of.
In lab based exams your real time experience pays off, which is good in a sense that simply mugging of concepts does not work in these exams (though there are proven strtagies to crack them also — will talk later in my tips section)
How is the learning path for these Certifications looks like?
- In my view — if you are beginner, I will recommend (1–2) weeks to brush up containers concepts. Take notes of some key concepts.
- Learn the basics of Kubernetes at your own pace (2–3 weeks), practice labs along side and take notes. Please have a look at the resources section for learning concepts and free labs based environments for practice.
- Then move to higher order or advanced topics/concepts (2–3 weeks), practice labs along side and keep take notes.
- Revision time, please don’t miss it, it is super critical. (1–2 weeks), practice labs along side and review notes taken in step 1, 2 and 3.
Overall, I see a learning path of 6–10 weeks time, where you will be very comfortable with K8S certification content and now you stand really good chance to crack the certification.
Once you clear any one Kubernetes certification, you K8S baseline knowledge will become solid enough to clear other certifications with much lesser efforts (but please don’t take it too easy or prepare for some nasty surprises). It should not take a maximum of 3–4 weeks for clearing the remaining two certifications each — once you clear your first one.
For detailed exam objective and content mapping, please see “My resource list as per exam objectives” in useful resources section at the end.
Which K8S Certification should I choose?
Depends on your role, interest and goals. I feel CKA and CKS should be attempted by everyone, CKAD - if you are little more into developing K8S based applications and applications architectures i.e. creating manifests for your application deployments and other related stuff.
Knowledge never hurts so I recommend to go for the kill (all 3), if feasible for you.
What are some of the best practices and tips for the Certification preparation?
I read a lot of blogs before my first exam (yes, I was nervous) and later as well (when I felt much better) and I have filtered the key tips that worked for me and many others. I have added some tips from my experience as well.
My Top 6 General Tips for any Certification Exam:
1. Book your exam in advance (though you can reschedule and cancel outside 24 hours of the exam). I booked my first exam more than a month in advance. The idea is have some date in mind for your goal otherwise you will keep dragging this. THIS BRINGS ACCOUNTABILITY AND SERIOUSNESS TOWARDS ACHIEVING THE GOALS (though not looks pleasant to eyes, above font change is intentional).
2. Everyone learns in a different way, so create your own learning strategy about how you will prepare for the certification exam. For me it was to learn concepts by referring to different sources and using repetition technique until I feel really comfortable with all imperative commands and YAMLs.
Marvin Minsky, a multi disciplinary genius, once said “you don’t understand anything until you learn it more than one way.”
3. Based on your strategy create short term goals and fit them in to your daily work schedule. For any exam, I usually do the first iteration really quick, this is to adapt my mind to this exam and key focus areas. I usually keep one week for my first iteration which includes going through all exam topics, which is usually a super quick phase for me. The second iteration is the detailed one, where I get into real focus mode or what is known as the flow state. Then I usually spend almost 3 more weeks on this phase. Finally, the third iteration lasts for a week or so, where I become really comfortable with certifications content and labs.
4. Don’t over strain yourself the night before the exam (MCQ based exams are little different where knowing and retaining a lot of things and concepts makes the actual difference but in lab based exams you need to be really fresh on your exam day). This matters. Nobody wants to waste time feeling sleepy or lethargic and doing too many typos or minor mistakes during the exam.
5. Keep track of your remaining exam time (there is no timer on the screen so handy to have a wall clock or timer ) and please.
6. Keep your ego at the door when you start the exam. To clarify, please don't take it on your ego if your are stuck on a question for more than 2–3 minutes (you could have invented Kubernetes itself at Google but then this is time based exam, please respect the time). It is important that you allocate time for each question, leaving at least10 minutes as buffer towards the end for review. You will be surprised to see that you actually need time to review.
6. Drinking water soothes the nerves, you are allowed to drink water from a clear non-labelled water bottle.
My Top 20 Specific Tips for K8S Certification Exams:
- Earlier you could use your own browser for exam but now the exam is conducted using PSI Secure browser — remote desktop. But still have access to the browser access inside VM.
- Read the technical documentation here and get oriented to keyboard shortcuts, cluster names you will see and other specifications. It is a must read before exam.
3. Practice imperative commands wherever possible. The saves a lot of time. You can find the cheat sheet is in resource links. Wherever possible, avoid working with YAMLs. Yes it is possible to use imperative commands — even if question specifically provides a template YAML to work with.
4. Practice generating your own manifests. I don’t like the YAMLs provided by exam because I don’t want to edit the provided YAMLs — they might miss few attributes/properties (looks like a subtle trick played in the exam). If you find yourself editing too much stuff; believe me you are on the wrong track. Rather create your own YAMLs using dry-run feature. Mousepad app is available as the only visual editor for editing manifests for example but you can’t access the same filesystem as the terminal.
5. Have a clear strategy how to review your results (since there is no auto validation). It is equally important how much to review in your solution, you can’t check everything so focus on key asks.
6. Don’t assume anything unless asked for, may be you are deleting some pods , you wait for them to be deleted but you see them again and again, dancing in front of you, again!!! Can someone tell tell me what is happening? You got the point, lets move on.
7. Be quick but not careless, otherwise you will end up wasting more time than you will save. Dont get offended I just mean moving not too fast that you have to slow down later. Maintain speed and thats where your preparation especally labs will help.
8. Use the right context (cluster and details) to solve the question. Usually if you use wrong cluster/context, you will not be able to locate the resources mentioned in the question. You should get a hint here if you are not finding mentioned resources in the cluster — I faced this once in my CKA exam. Check your cluster/context again. Check cluster worker nodes too if it is not mentioned in the exam to find the resource/file.
9. Use Ctrl+insert and Ctrl+paste to copy and paste on windows, don’t type manually if you can copy from the question. (command+c and command+v work on Mac). More such details here.
10. Don’t delete your manifests(YAMLs) on the system which you created while solving questions; you might need them during your final review.
11. Be little quick in the beginning of the exam so that you don't not feel the pressure towards the end. The proctor may remind you when you are towards the end (I was reminded twice of the time remaining during all my exams but don’t rely on some one reminding you, keep track of your exam time).
12. One strategy to ease the nerves before the exam is to practice few sample labs for 15–20 minutes before logging in to the exam, for me it works every time since I don't feel the exam anxiety (my mind is diverted just before the exam) and also I feel kind of warmed up for the exam — which can be really good for creating long term focus. Make sure you don't choose any problematic or complex labs during this warm up activity. You want to feel really confident moving into the exam, not otherwise.
13. You might see some very tough questions in the beginning and very easy ones towards the end. So take each question on its merit and move quickly, yet carefully. If you are a fast reader sometimes checking next 3–4 questions can give you some more ideas, may there is very easy one waiting in queue but take this with caution.
14. Each question carries a different weight mentioned at left top of exam screen. I have also observed that not all highly weighted questions are tough and not all low weighted questions are easy. How CNCF calculates the scores is not revealed, though passing scores for each exam is mentioned in percentages. In CKS exam, I got two very highly weighted questions which were fairly straightforward.
15. Lot of blogs talk about tmux and other screen splitting tools (I never felt the need for the same). So if you have no experience with them, don’t worry about it.
16. Don’t restart the cluster components unless asked for. This may delay your exam question while the component comes up and you keep waiting.
17. You will not see the exam result instantaneously (unlike most MCQ based exams) but usually it will be available on website and through email notification within 36 hours. My CKS exam results were made available after 50 odd hours, so please be patient. I have also seen someone on reddit talking about 10–12 days of waiting time for receiving the results.
Long story short it may take some good time for your to receive your results; so please relax, though you can file a support case after 36 hours through the website. (I believe there is some manual review involved in marking the exam results which is accountable for these delays but not sure).
18. Again, read the page at below link very carefully and understand the important details about allowed resources which can be used during the exam here (repetition of point 1).
19. Practice, Practice and more Practice. Don’t waste too much time in memorizing theory and concepts, only one thing that works in labs based exams is — yes you got it right, practice.
20. Recently I have received good feedback about killer.sh exam simulation labs, so worth trying those labs which are included when you purchase of CKA,CKAD, CKS exams. I havent used those way back in 2021 so please check on this one here.
That’s all I want to share for now from my K8S certification journey experience , wishing you all the best for your K8S certification journey.
For any specific queries, please feel free to reach out.
Edit: I have renewed my cert in later part of 2023 and seems above inputs are still valid. I saw few repetitions in exam as well :-)
Connect with me or Follow me on LinkedIn at https://www.linkedin.com/in/clouddevopsarchitect/
Blog Refresh date: 8 June 2024
My other Blogs:
Useful resources list:
1. Exam curriculum:
https://github.com/cncf/curriculum
2. Exam related details:
https://docs.linuxfoundation.org/tc-docs/certification/certification-resources-allowed#certified-kubernetes-administrator-cka-and-certified-kubernetes-application-developer-ckad
3. Hands on environments, some of these are free, please check it for yourself:
https://labs.play-with-k8s.com/
4. My resource list as per exam objectives:
https://github.com/reachcloudsme/k8s-certifications-resources
5. KodeKloud’s course on CKA/CKAD/CKS
For CKAD — I used it along with other resources, for CKA and CKS — I got enough experience to try different things on my own. I have seen some really good reviews from other certified users as well.
6. For details on recent RDP related changes, nice blog here: https://itnext.io/cks-cka-ckad-changed-terminal-to-remote-desktop-157a26c1d5e
Credits: To my teachers, mentors, friends and family.
Disclaimer: This is my first blog so please be lenient in your review comments; though any constructive comments are highly appreciated. I have tried my best to respect the NDA while writing this blog, still if you find any miss, please report it to me so that it can be corrected. This blog is intended for learning and informational purposes only and any bias in any form that has crept in, is purely unintentional and use your discretion while using any techniques advised above.
