Certified Kubernetes Administrator Study Guide
About This Tech Zone Guide
This study guide aims to help learners prepare for the Certified Kubernetes Administrator(CKA) exam.
A Few Notes about the exam
- Currently (Sept 2022) the exam is based on Kubernetes version 1.24. Please take this into consideration when working with the different study material, a lot of it might use an earlier version. The goal is to align the exam environment with the current Kubernetes minor version 4-8 weeks after release date so be sure to check what version is used when sitting the exam.
- The exam is lab/performance based and consist of different tasks/problems to be solved on the command line running on Linux
- There’s 15-20 tasks that needs to be solved in 2 hours
- The exam is done online and you can take it from anywhere you’d like as long as your location meets the requirements
- Available resources during the exam is documents provided in the lab machine and ONE additional browser tab which can be used to access resources at https://kubernetes.io/docs/, https://github.com/kubernetes/, https://kubernetes.io/blog/
- The exam environment consists of six different Kubernetes clusters, all with one master and a different number of workers. There’s also different CNIs in use so this is something to be aware of in your studying. Environment Details
Brought to you by CKA Study Guide by Rudi Martinsen
CKA Learning Resources
- Docker for the Absolute Beginner - 4.5 hours Hands On Online Course - Learn Docker with Hands On Coding Exercises. For beginners in DevOps
- Kube.Academy - ~21m - How to Prepare for the CKA Exam
- KodaCloud -~18hrs- CKA Prep Course with Practice Exam
- Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) with Practice Tests - 10 hours Hands On Online Course - Learn concepts and practice for the Kubernetes Certification with hands-on labs right in your browser
- Kubernetes Certified Application Developer (CKAD) with Tests - 10 hours Hands On Online Course - Learn concepts and practice for the Kubernetes Certification with hands-on labs right in your browser
- killer.sh - Paid Kubernetes Exam Simulator for CKAD, CKA, and CKS that many have found to be well worth the price
- Study4Exam - Practice tests to prepare for CKAD, CKA, and CKS exams that contain tricky questions covering all core exam topics in-depth, not free but woth trying once before taking the exam
Exam Taking Tips
- Be very comfortable with vi editor of linux
- Practice imperative commands and depending on yaml will lead to mistakes and time consumption
- Practice all the tasks from the kubernetes.io and book mark the pages corresponding to the syllabus
- Make sure to login to the master nodes for upgrade and debugging question
- use sudo , don’t login as root because thats an additional exit
- when restoring etcd snapshot make sure you restore to the provided backup and also update the etcd.yaml and wait for the etcd pod to start
- make sure not to spend more than 5 mins on a 4% question.
- Only use imperative command for all operations. know your commands and careful with the version of documentation you are referring. its v1.19.0
- DO NOT ATTEMPT ANY QUESTION WITHOUT READING AND DO NOT START WITHOUT CHANGING CONTEXT.
- IF U LOGIN TO NODE DON’T FORGET TO EXIT. All commands in the nodes have to use “SUDO”
- START ANSWERING ONLY AFTER AUTOCOMPLETE IS CREATED
Pro Tips
- The exam comes with a free re-take, incase you feel that you are not able to reach the passing score of 66%, concentrate on remembering the questions.
- You are most likely to get the same questions in the second attempt.