Hi Friends,
I’m writing this article to share my own experience with CKAD exam. I appeared for Kubernetes certification exam and I cleared it in 1st attempt.
After my AWS certification, I decided to explore the world of K8s. The kubernetes as a service provided by across cloud providers (EKS by AWS, AKS by Azure and GKE by GCP).
The Cloud Native Computing Foundation provides following certifications
- The certifications exams are Proctored and Open Book where you allowed to open and refer https://kubernetes.io/docs/home/
- CKAD is a practical exam , you have been provided configured cluster(s) and need to solve 19 descriptive questions in 2 hours time.
- Every question has some weightage associated with it. It can range from 13% to 2% in my case.
- Exam topics are as below
Core Concepts (13%)
Multi-Container Pods (10%)
Pod Design (20%)
State Persistence (8%)
Configuration (18%)
Observability (18%)
Services and Networking (13%) - Exam having one free retake, means even if you failed in first attempt, still you have one more chance to get pass and certified.
I used or recommended below resources for CKAD preparation:
- Udemy has two good courses
- CKAD by Mumshad having practical tests and lighting labs
- CKAD by Zeal Vohra
- Practice this Gold Mine URL
- BB Tutorials – The 150 Questions
- Killer.sh – A week before actual exam you can take simulation from killer.sh
- A CKAD weekly Challenges
- A sidecar container – a must for exam
Precision is as Important as Speed: Speed is most important factor having solving the questions. You should be fast enough to read question , analyse it and solving it.
I remembered the famous dialogue from Bollywood movie while preparing for exam. Baajirao ki raftaar hi, Bajirao ki pehchan hain
Tips for Exam Day:
- You can login to exam portal https://trainingportal.linuxfoundation.org/learn/dashboard, a well 15 mins before.
- Be ready with Passport or other permitted documents for identification.
- Have clear web camera and Mouse.
- Exam screen divided into 2 sections, Left hand side having Questions and Right hand side actual terminal.
- Always use set-context command before attempting the question. At top of every question this command will be given.
- Check the weitage of question, you can skip question and attempt it later on.
- for one of question (mostly last one), you required to SSH inside the node and once you done you need to come out of it. You can use ‘exit‘ command to come out
- I got completely disconnected from exam while solving 1st question, if such thing happens, you should quickly again login to exam portal and start your exam again.
I lost couple of minutes due to this. - Move fast with imperative commands i.e. Kubectl CLI and YAML file is must.
- A well understanding of https://kubernetes.io/docs/home/ or https://kubernetes.io/blog/ or https://github.com/kubernetes. You may need to refer this URL during exam.
Overall, CKAD is a challenging certification due to its Practical approach. The practical nature of exam ensure lots of hands-on practice and good understanding of K8s Concepts.
So passing the exam and becoming CKAD certified is worth rewarding and FUN.
anupam pawar 
Useful Pawar for TEchies interested to take CKAD 🙂
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very well drafted prepartion guide CKAD,
Congratulation & Thank you for this blog Aanupam 🙂
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