I recently cleared my CKA exam, and it was one of the toughest certification cleared till date. The exam is online, proctored and requires solving multiple tasks on Kubernetes cluster itself.
Here are the certification details and my experience on clearing the CKA certification.
CKA certification exam is for those who want to showcase their skills required for managing and maintaining Kubernetes clusters as admin.
As a Kubernetes administrator, one needs to know the in-out of Kubernetes cluster from the installation of a basic cluster as well as configuring and also managing production grade setup.
Exam Curriculum
Domains Covered Weightage Storage 10% Troubleshooting 30% Workloads & Scheduling 15% Cluster Architecture, Installation & Configuration 25% Services & Networking 20%
Understand how the storage classes, persistent volumes, persistent volume claims works
Understand volumeMode, accessModes and persistentVolumeReclaimPolicy
Learn how to create volumes with hostPath and emptyDir and mounting them to container/pod/applications
Practice on how to create Persistence Volume Claim and bind with Pertistence Volumes. You should also know how to use PVC with PODs.
Troubleshooting – 30%
Understand the various log locations and where to check in case of any failures – cluster and node level
Troubleshoot cluster, application, and network failures
Understand how to monitor and debug applications
Workloads & Scheduling – 15%
Get to know how to use ConfigMaps and Secrets with applications.
practice scaling applications
Understand how the deployments works – practice rolling updates and rollbacks of application
Know how to configure pod with resource limits – CPU and memory.
Cluster Architecture, Installation & Configuration – 25%
Know how to create and version upgrade cluster using kubeadm
practice etcd backup and restore process
Understand RBAC (role based access control)
Implement and manage highly-available Kubernetes cluster
Services & Networking – 20%
Understand how the cluster networking works.
Understand different service types and endpoints – ClusterIp, NodePort and LoadBalancer
Know how to configure and implement network policy
Understand how the pod connects each other
Practice on how to expose pods and deployments
CKA exam Resources
Resources that I used to prepare for CKA certification are as below.
I have used CKA course available on KodeKloud and the playgrounds to do hands-on labs which was really helpful in spinning up the cluster on the fly.
Covered official cheat sheet available on the K8s site
Practice scenarios on Katacoda and Killercoda
Executed all the tasks available on the K8s documentation
CKA exam tips
Make use of the provided notepad for editing the yaml and noting down the questions which are answered or pending.
Use aliases for repeatable command (ex. alias k=kubectl ).
Use export for repeatable command arguments (ex. export do=”–dry-run=client -o yaml” and export now=”–force –grace-period 0″ ).
Know how to use kubectl -h and kubectl explain as these commands may come handy while defining resources.
PRACTICE, PRACTICE, PRACTICE – no other way
Complete all the tasks on the Kubernetes documentation
root privileges can be obtained using “sudo -i “
exam timer starts only after your proctor releases the exam.
Desk and the surrounding should be clean – you are allowed to keep a water bottle and no one should enter the room.
Ctrl+C & and Ctrl+V are not supported in the exam terminal – follow the instructions given in the exam as per your desktop/laptop OS.
Pay attention to the context as each question will need changing cluster-context.
Learn basic linux commands
Don’t practice on minikube as exam environments are built with kubeadm and you may get confused.
Sample CKA exam questions
Upgrade cluster control plane and worker nodes from x.yy to x.yz
Backup etcd, delete resources and restore the cluster using backup data.
Expose deployment or pod as service
Debug pod and node failure and resolve the issue.
Create kubernetes resources – deployment, pod, namespace, persistence volume, perstistence volume claim, Secrets, ConfigMaps, Service Account, Roles, Network Policy etc
CKA certification and Courses