Certified Kubernetes Administrator has been on my mind for the last year but I didn’t have enough time to start on the curriculum due to other vouchers I had were expiring so now I found myself with one month to burn a CKA + CKS Bundle. This was in the back of my mind but the emails from CNCF were definitely needed reminder, just like anything without organization time will escape you if your not taking notes.
The exam of CKA is drawn to by many practitioners that are either learning kubernetes, or people with more familiarity with the subject in the day to day. I always emphasize that the certification is the cement of the foundation of a house, it supports your growth in your day-to-day but things change in production and at scale.
Exam Experience
Similar to killer.sh I felt like killer.sh well it is stated is actually more challenging then the exam itself, but time management is pivotal because you have two hours to complete the tasks. You’ll likely receive 17-20 tasks they are randomized unsure on what makes that determination. Sadly, CNCF is utilizing PSI for the exam that uses a Bridge Connection, it essentially is a software agent that provides a secure monitored session in the backend to PSI. You’ll connect to this system around 30 minutes prior to the test if you choose I would because the verification process is a little more robust. This is just a question I had in killer.sh terminal to give you a sample of what to expect.
You don’t have to do some things that were not set in the past such as setting “alias k=kubectl” is not needed this is already pre-installed for you, you are also utilizing Kubeadm so while you’re practicing in Minikube perhaps locally understand the differences because the exam is based on kubeadm. Each question has a different weight determined by the tasks but overall I’d say the exam has a fair set of cluster architecture, maintenance and more.
First Exam
I took this on Nov 4th and retook on the 6th because this particular week is fairly busy for me, in hindsight I’d do it the same way no regrets on that.
First exam check-in was extremely fast, launched exam the CLI itself is using Linux XDE or XSE? I can’t remember the name but remember how to use sudo in a terminal it’s easy to get lost real quick in the terminal thinking its your local one, so for example if your moving from one node to the next and need to run elevated privileges you’ll need to run “sudo -i” to launch the root shell. Additionally you are allowed to use the web browser really tiny, I did the test on a 15.5″ screen laptop it is recommended this size but even with glasses its hard to navigate the three slices of a browser,terminal and task. So due to this on this round it felt like that got me one over on a couple instance that started time consuming to complete a task on a node. An example is you refer to the doc to check on options or use k -h on the command but needed more fields or wanted to run those fields it can get a little time consuming.
A Tip I would use is to have to run this command
export do="--dry-run=client -o yaml"You can then use this to quickly run imperative commands that you will thank me later such as the task above I’d approach that imperatively then edit the yaml file to address the name of the container such as the below command
k run pod1 --image=httpd:2.4.41-alpine $do > pod.yamlvim pod.yamlLittle nuances like this will save you time on the quick tasks while of course I’m leaving a little bit of it for you to determine the next approach this should start getting you to strategize how the pods can be created quickly if needed.
So for the first exam I got caught up with a few weighted questions that if I recall were around “7%” and was concerned because I wanted to ensure that the command was correct and complete. Such as if I’m writing a input into a file to open the file to verify it wrote inside it the way as asked.
By the time I finished just about everything I had to review my findings and only had ten minutes to say I was surprised is a understatement “time moves extremely fast”
Round 2 Nov 7th
I spent most of the Saturday reviewing docs and using KodeKloud practice tests continuously and writing YAML in declarative format to make sure I could exercise and still keep the challenge format of timing. Unsure on how the grading works because it does take 24 hours and unsure if its a exact way that you need to complete or that you have to complete it a certain way. The reason I say this is I actually finished this much earlier then the first time and had around 30 minutes to review a few I had to revisit this then just melted into troubleshooting that took me to long to get through even with the docs. Before I knew it the exam was up and I awaited 24 hours to an improvement but weak points that I’d like to practice or understand how because I recall deploying those correctly.
Overall experience it’s interactive and much more enjoyable from a learning standpoint because you’re abstract using the command line to interact with the API and continuously moving so your in the right exam if you want a challenge. The downfall is the terminal isn’t the best and the latency issues the size and since you can’t use dual monitors that you could previously, this would help greatly because managing this tiny terminal was frustrating essentially think of your browser currently split in three panels. However unsure if this experience could be enhanced at least from the PSI side I’m aware that Instruqt has something more similar but I haven’t had any issues on that, (going off topic).
I’ll be attempting this again thinking end of week and will keep everyone updated. Stay on the lookout as CNCF is charging 395 for CKA right now but typically in this month have substantial discounts.