Acing CKAD Exam in a week
Earlier this month I earned the CKAD (Certified Kubernetes Application Developer) Certificate. The exam is aiming to test the attendees’ ability to design, build, configure, and expose cloud-native applications for Kubernetes. The goal is to score a passing grade (66%) on a 2-hour online, proctored, performance-based exam. The exam consists of a set of performance-based problems to be solved in a command line, running Kubernetes. You take the test online with a proctor watching you.
General exam info
On the following links, you will find all you need to know about the exam itself: rules, exam environment test (system), curriculum, registration, tips, and more. Please, check it out before you book the exam or even start studying. I mean, you want to know what you’re dealing with, right? 😊
1. Certified Kubernetes Application Developer
2. Curriculum overview
3. Candidate Handbook
4. Exam Tips
How to prepare
Here, let me try to give you some personal impressions of each study material I used. 1 point in Length could be equivalent to ~2.5 hours of effort. So, 3/10 means ~7.5 hours, but please consider this remark more like effort ratio among courses rather than precise measurement.
And yes, I suggest you study precisely in this order.
Length: 8/10
Complexity: 7/10
At the moment of writing, this course is up-to-date with the CNCF curriculum. All relevant exam topics are clearly explained and this will give you a great overview of what you need to know to pass CKAD. It is also an excellent value for money (on frequent discounts you can get it for 10–20€).
Along with it, you’ll get:
1. Free access to KodeKloud’s playground with provisioned Kubernetes environment and testing scenarios (with solutions). You get access to LAB tasks for all relevant exam topics + several types of mocking exams. Very useful to get some hands-on experience.
2. Access to Slack workspace with ~30k users interested in some kind of Kubernetes certifications. Great community to get some support if you need it!
3. Coupon which you can use for getting a 15% discount when you book your exam.
Length: 3/10
Complexity: 4/10
After completing the Udemy course, this is mandatory literature. It is not so complex nor will exhaust you, but you will learn a handful of moves that are not explicitly covered in the Udemy course. What I’ve also found beneficial is multiple solutions for the same problem.
Length: 5/10
Complexity: 10/10
As a final stage of preparation (and only after you’ve mastered the prior two), I would strongly recommend these practice tests. And I want to emphasize this once more. And once more just in case 😊.
This exam is designed as a great knowledge checkpoint and will help you with pointing out which gaps to focus on prior to attempting the exam.
After you book your exam through the CNCF portal, you’ll get 3 days of access in total (2x 36 hours) to practice for FREE. Even though these exams are way harder than the actual exam, if you’re able to find your way through, you should be comfortable and confident with taking the actual exam.
You’ll be presented with an almost identical UI as the actual exam. The best thing is this forces you to type. A lot. And fast. So, as a logical consequence, you’ll become very familiar with all you need to know for taking CKAD exam and even score big! What I’ve also found useful is the fact you’ll have examples on how to check almost everything you’ve done (read further on to hear about my miserable experience).
Personal Experience & Tips
To be frank, I considered myself as a Kubernetes rookie before tackling this and it took me 7 days in total to prepare. At last, seems like I “messed something along the way” since I didn’t even feel well-prepared: my performance and focus diminished 2 days before the exam, managed to first attempt the killer.sh just ~15 hours before the exam (not recommended), didn’t manage to verify more than a half of the exam, was writing till the very last minute (since I poorly managed my time), and didn’t know the answer on a part of the question which had the weight of 8% in the total score. Sooo, yes, I did a few things totally wrong and I was a bit in shock when results came and showed an “easy” 95% for me.
What I suggest to you is: please, learn from my experience and organize yourself better than I did!
And now let me give you some first-class advice to achieve it:
1. First (and absolutely crucial):
— use kubectl imperative commands whenever possible!
— be familiar with vi/nano text editors
— kubernetes.io/docs is your friend (you may have just one extra tab in the browser and use it only for official docs)
Let me put it this way: I used imperative commands all the time, I am fairly skilful with vi and where to find something in K8s docs, but … still failed to finish on time! Yeah, it would be a complete disaster if I didn’t perfect just a tiny part of this instruction! You just need to have it all in muscle memory. Period.
2. Second most important thing is: Do not spend too much time on a task if you don’t know the straightforward way towards the solution. Go sprint till the last question through “easy tasks” and then get back for the rest of the points.
3. You should know how to validate your solution and do it immediately after you consider some task as done. Spend this 1 extra minute right after each completed task. And — of course — learn how to spend just 1 minute (and not 5) 😊.
4. In other blogs posts you may read a bit of advice to use aliases for kubectl commands. JFYI, autocompletion is preinstalled, so if you’re more comfortable with <tab> <tab> …
5. Be mentally prepared to spend up to 30 minutes until the online proctor verifies your environment and system is good to go.
6. If you aim to score “just enough to pass”, a good rule of thumb would be to “just” master Lighting/Mock exams from Udemy (KodeKloud). What always worked out for me? If you’re able to solve all tasks in half the time predicted — go ahead and book the exam!
7. If you aim to score above 85%, you should get very familiar with killer.sh.
8. Make sure you’ve passed the exam environment (system) test and that your webcam is working. Without this, you will not be able to take the exam!
9. And don’t forget to have some fun! You have a free retake in case the first attempt doesn’t come up well for you 🍀.
If you’re interested in working with amazing people (i.e. like me), check this out ;)
This blog post is published by Comsysto Reply GmbH.
