Rahul's Journal

My CKA Experience and Preparation Guide

My CKA Experience and Preparation Guide

CKA is Certified Kubernetes Administrator by Linux Foundation.

Rahul Jaisinghani's photo
Rahul Jaisinghani
·

4 min read

Table of contents

The TLDR Answer:

Getting Prepared:

Must Do List

  1. CKA Course with Labs by Mumshad Mannambeth

  2. Essential topics and practice questions playlist by Alok Kumar - Youtube Playlist

  3. https://killer.sh/cka - Mock test with Simulator

  4. Tasks from Kubernetes Documentation

Optional

  1. CKA study Guide by Benjamin Muschko - Book

  2. GitHub Repository links for tips and practice questions - #1, #2, #3

  3. Kubernetes the Hard way

Important topics

  • Persistent Volume and Persistent Volume Claims

  • Ingress Rule and Network Policies

  • etcd Backup and Restore

  • Clusters Upgrade using Kubeadm

  • Troubleshoot Node Failure

  • Role, RoleBinding and Service Account

  • Outputting the logs into a file

  • Scaling Deployments

  • Assigning Pods to Specific Nodes

  • Commands and Arguments in Pods

  • Creating Service for Pod or Deployment

Exam Day Tips

  • Join 30 mins before exam time, Validation process might take time.

  • Read the guide and candidate handbook at least 2 days before the exam

  • Attempt high-weightage questions first

  • A good Internet connection is a must. In case of interruption, your environment might reset to default

Detailed Answer

My Experience

I completed the CKA certification on 15th December 2022. I have been working with Kubernetes past 2 years.

Time to Prepare for the CKA exam:

30 hours of Preparation(1-2 hours each day for 2-4 weeks) is enough if you have experience with Kubernetes.
For Beginners, I would suggest at least 100 hours of preparation i.e. 2-3 hours each day for 30-60 days.

Detailed Preparation Guide

The preparation of CKA is divided into 3 parts:

  1. Learn Basics

  2. Practice, Practice, Practice...

  3. Get comfortable with the Exam Environment

Learn Basics

Documentation has all the details and is a good source but to save time I would recommend buying a course with content in an organized fashion

The course that which whole community recommend is CKA Course with Labs by Mumshad Mannambeth

The best part about this course is the live practice labs and a detailed diagram for each topic.

Once done with the course, watch the Important topics youtube playlist by Alok Kumar. The playlist covers questions with the most weightage in the Exam

If you like to go in more depth and want to read, you can buy the book CKA study Guide by Benjamin Muschko.

Practice, Practice, Practice...

Once you feel confident with all the topics, It's time to get hands-on experience for the exam.
Ideally, CKA course labs and mock tests are sufficient to pass the exam but to get a higher score you have to get more hands-on practice

With more practice, you can attempt more questions in less time.

For Practice, start with the practice questions playlist by Alok Kumar. For practicing online free/freemium hosting, you can check these sources. Alternatively, set up kubeadm locally.

More Practice questions can be found on - #1, #2, #3

Once you feel you are comfortable with all the topics and are able to solve the questions, Now is time to experience the exam environment

Note: If you have time, try out Kubernetes the Hard way. Not necessary for the exam. Do it if you want to understand each component in Depth

Get comfortable with the Exam Environment

To save time during the exam, it is better to get comfortable with the exam environment beforehand.

When you purchase the CKA exam from Linux Foundation, it gives you two sessions of Exam simulator by https://killer.sh/cka

For Exam Environment

  1. Watch this video uploaded by Linux Foundation

  2. Attempt 2 mock tests provided by https://killer.sh/cka

  3. Read the guide and candidate handbook in detail at least 2 days before the exam

I felt Mock exam by the killer.sh is difficult than the actual exam

Exam Day

Relax, if you get > 50% in killer.sh mock exams, you can easily win the CKA exam with extra time in hand.
Make sure you join at least 30 mins before exam time, Validation process might take a longer
You will get 2 exam attempts, don't lose hope if you are unable to clear on the first attempt.
Try to attempt high-weightage questions related to ETCD, cluster upgrade, and troubleshooting first, then move to low-weightage questions
Instead of solving questions in order, solve the high weightage, then topics you are comfortable with, then other questions

Following the above same approach, I successfully passed the CKA exam. I wish you all success in passing the exam too!

KubernetesckaDevops