CKA,CKAD Exam Tips to Follow

Are you a student or professional who have an interest to deep-dive into kubernetes or k8s and willing to test your knowledge gain with cncf exam ? If yes, then this blog is for you to know birds-eye view of it and with some tips to follow .

There are 3 level of certification Linux Foundation provides for k8s world,

- CKAD - Certified k8s Application Developer

- CKA - Certified k8s Administrator

- CKS Certified k8s security specialist

Topics covered for CNCF Certification Courses CKA , CKAD , CKS exam can be found under below link ,

https://github.com/cncf/curriculum/blob/master/CKAD_Curriculum_V1.21.pdf

Exam Guidelines: https://docs.linuxfoundation.org/tc-docs/certification/lf-candidate-handbook

Training Materials : My choice is Udemy Trainings by Mumshad Mannambeth . you can also follow KubeAcademy , Lynda , Pluralsight to glance through topics.But Mumshad is best in his way of explanation - Many Thanks to Mumshad !

Exam Duration : 2 hrs . Total Questions : 19 or 17 (varies)

CKAD is for developers and CKA is little advanced including upgrade,installation experience,troubleshooting , security ,networking , etc. Studied both and went for CKA(14th Aug 2021) first and then CKAD(28 Aug) . Second one is subset of first one hence with all concept understanding quite can be cleared. Exam is to the standard and hard to clear for easy-goers.

Roadmap followed before CNCF exam against CKA,CKAD - Udemy Trainings (By Mumshad)

Step 1 : Start with docker basics

https://github.com/AnithaRajamuthu/k8s/blob/main/Docker.md - This is my self note against Udemy training by Mumshad

Step2 : Complete k8s basics

https://github.com/AnithaRajamuthu/k8s/blob/main/k8s.md

Step3 : Complete CKAD practise test

https://github.com/AnithaRajamuthu/k8s/blob/main/CKAD%20Readiness%20Tips.md

Try attempting below sample exercise 2-3 times,

Exercises Git Repo https://github.com/dgkanatsios/CKAD-exercises

Step 4: Complete CKA practise test

Step 5: Complete JSON path training by Mumshad

Step 6 : Repeat step1 till 5 for complete mastery of commands via Practise .

Step 7: Be familiar on vim command if you don't have prior experience

VIM Cheatsheet https://devhints.io/vim

Step 8: Use tmux for multi terminal if you want to do multi tasking , else normally single terminal is quite comfortable .

tmux cheatsheet https://gist.github.com/MohamedAlaa/2961058

Step 9: Complete Exam simulator exercise provided by CNCF - https://killer.sh/dashboard

Step 10 : Below 3 links are allowed during exam

https://github.com/kubernetes
https://kubernetes.io/docs
https://kubernetes.io/blog/

But be master on kubernetes.io/docs on where to refer for what kind of yaml, keep a bookmark if needed for your quick reference.

Being developer , i had to really practice with enough time to get familiarized on networking,storage,upgrade concepts . KodeKloud platform by Mumshad provides live playground for us to practice.

Exam Tips:

1.Time Management : If you are an experienced person 2hrs should be fine ,but for anyone if you sit on a question for more than 10-15 mins you will face a time crunch. Tip to follow: if you see mark is less % flag it and come back to close it to save your own exam time. I was able to complete 15 mins before and had reviewed my answers this is feasible only if you practise on speed.

2. vim editor: Exam will be full of practical and practice tests and you will not find questions anywhere .If you understand concepts well you can easily answer them.

you will be able to use only vim Editor formatting ensure indentation is proper before applying yamls.

Tip to follow : set tabstop=2,set shiftwidth =2 ,set expandtab , set number , set paste, set autoindent, set smartindent are some tipful command to configure under vim editor setting (.vimrc) before you start exam

3. Exam environment: There will be multiple clusters shared to you under exam environments. Always copy-paste cluster config at top left corner of your exam window against each question to ensure you are under right cluster to provide your solutions.

4. Imperative Commands: Follow imperative commands during exam and never write yaml files until highly needed like network policy and ingress file - Mostly rest all you can do imperative way and then edit them.

5. Sleep Well : Very important ! Sleep well before exam to keep yourself fresh as you need full concentration and peace to clear this exam.

6.Shortcut commands: Have shortcut variables for repeating commands eg:

# alias k=kubectl  -- Use k alias to enter k instead of typing complete kubectl command

# export DR="--dry-run:client -o yaml" -- Eg: Use $DR environment variable for dry run command.

This saves time in punching complete word or line again and again during exam.

Other shortcut references,

      po for PODS
      rs for ReplicaSets
      deploy for Deployments
      svc for Services
      ns for Namespaces
      netpol for NetworkPolicy
      pv for PersistentVolume
      pvc for PersistentVolumeClaims
      sa for ServiceAccounts
      sc for StorageClass

7. Final Tip : OS Upgrade , ETCD backup & restore, Networking , Storage , Deployment rollout , Troubleshooting are core for CKA exam. Rest topics are mostly common for both exam.CKAD is kind of practical lengthier questions including sidecar,ambassador pattern questions understanding is even-though you write imperative commands there will be definite edit required, appear for this post lots and lots of practise and highly confident.

Exam questions covers mostly all topics mentioned under CNCF curriculum page , hence would say thoroughness on all topics is a must .

If you have Ops experience and have 2yrs+ worked or supported k8s platform it should be quite easy for you to complete exam .

Any College Students this write-up should definitely help you. With Cloud Computing and SaaS Journey, platform(k8s) learning and insight is very basic for you to go chase parallel.

All the Best ! Happy Learning!