Kubernetes is now incredibly popular among companies, getting certified on this technology is a surefire way to advance your career if you work as a DevOps or Cloud Engineer. I have been working with many different versions of Kubernetes, GKE and EKS along the years and still learned so much through this certification.
I recommend the fantastic Udemy course from below:
Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) with Practice Tests
Follow the course, practice the labs (3 times) and maybe do a round of questions from https://github.com/dgkanatsios/CKAD-exercises
During the exam, you can use the official Kubernetes documentation, so having bookmarks ready is a must.
- Set up kubectl auto-completion directly when you start the exam, aliases are not as important as most people would say and I did without any. However the vi configuration can be very useful for a quick template change.
- Exam provided notepad is very basic, don’t expect too much from it.
- Work on your node and cluster troubleshooting skills, this will help you to navigate quickly through the questions
- Memorize important paths: /var/lib/kubelet/, /etc/kubernetes/, /etc/kubernetes/manifests/
- Practice with the busybox:1.28 image to test DNS and wget pages.
- Make sure you know all services that must run on a typical cluster and how to restart them if needed
- Stay calm when you switch between k8s contexts and use the exit command, I heard it can be painful to exit your main exam terminal
- The main challenge even if you know your stuff is the time, don’t waste time on a single question. Flag it and go to the next one. Every time I generated YAML templates, I used the following name: question1.yaml. Easier when you come back to a flagged question.
I scored 90% on first try by following these tips, best of luck to everyone!