It finally happened. Three years of playing around with Kubernetes and I finally decided to take the plunge to earn my CKA. It was NOT easy.
So, if you find yourself on the page and wonder what you can do to earn this glorious cert, then I’ll give you my pointers. I’d like to add that there are TONS of articles and blog posts describing the best ways to earn or master the exam. Hopefully my advice can give you some pointers on what to expect and how to prepare yourself.
If you’re a person who hates exams, wasn’t good with exams, is stressed about passing this. Hey, take solace. If there are tons of people saying they passed, you can too.
STARTING POINT
Install Kubernetes on your desktop. Don’t think, just do it. You can’t pass this exam by just studying the information. You’ll need to put that in practice.
Assuming you’ve installed everything and Minikube is running, now you get to chose what study path works best for you.
I’d suggest spending some extra cash on Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) with Practice Tests on Udemy by Mumshad Mannambeth. His course had lots of videos on the various topics you’ll be tested on, but they’re short and sweet. Right to the point. After one or two videos, you will be re-directed to KodeKloud where a virtual environment is created for you to solve the problems in the exam. I’ll give you a cool hint about the practice exams, they really are what will be on the live exam. I cannot recommend Mumshad’s course, it may be long, but you will gain a better understanding of Kubernetes architecture.
If you’re not a fan of the video series and would rather just read, you can do the CKA course on LinuxFoundation.org. I’ll warn you right off the bat, the course is $375, $575 for the course and exam. And while those prices are steep, the content is well put together. At the end of each section, you have labs. While you won’t get an environment like KodeKloud, you can download the lab instructions in PDF for future use. I still have some content from 2018. What I liked about LinuxFoundation labs step action guide is that it really gets you into the terminal. You absolutely build everything. While KodeKloud will have environments pre-setup, LinuxFoundation will need for you to go through the motions on Terminal.
After you finish the course, I highly suggest going through these practical exercises on GitHub that will help you through various tasks. I idea is about repetition, the more you do it, the more you’ll be in the mindset for the exam and beyond.
Done with Basics?
At this point, you’ve done the courses and feel confident to take the exam right? Great, but really hold off just yet. Take some time to get familiar with the Kubernetes official documentation. Great thing about this exam is that you are allowed one extra tab open on your browser, and that will only be for Kubernetes Documentation. Let’s be honest, Kubernetes is too hard to remember all the Yaml formats. Really think about what might be your weak points on the exam and learn how to search for it.
The exam is over 2 hours, but time WILL fly. So best thing for you to do is know how to use shortcuts. Can you do everything over Yaml? Absolutely, but should you use it, not all the time. This page actually helped me learn how to run/deploy anything I needed by just running commands instead of copy and paste for a Yaml. If you can run these commands instead of researching a yaml format, you will save time. And, again, time is not your friend in this exam.
CONCLUSION
The CKA is a hard exam, but you will pass it. I believe you can do it. Invest the time to get this knocked out.