Hello Folks,

I appeared for the exam on 19th October 2018 and yesterday(20th Oct 2018), I got the result & I scored 92%, Yay :)

I got so many request about How to prepare for the exam, Here’s my experience with preparation for the exam.

A bit about Exam:

• Duration: 3 hours (which is fair time if you do lot of practice, I completed in 2 hours 15 mins)
• Questions: 24
• Clusters: 6

After clearing 9 certs to become RHCA (Red Hat Certified Architect), exam environment was kind of familiar to me.

to be specific, it’s browser based exam which is monitored by a proctor, where right half of the screen is your terminal and left half is your question pane.

Like Red Hat Exams, CKA is also hands-on exam which test your practical, troubleshooting knowledge with kubernetes.

Beginning:

• Register for the exam here.
• Read Candidate Handbook and exam tips carefully.

Preparing for the Exam: Phase 1 (Kubernetes Knowledge):

• Walid Shaari’s github repo is extremely useful entrypoint for getting starting around syllabus and many useful links and guide :)

• Create mind map of Kubernetes docs, it will help you to find something quickly since you can use docs for the reference.

• Get your hands dirty with Kubernetes tasks.

• Go through Kubernetes Concepts and Kubernetes Reference at least twice.

• To utilise time wisely, familiar yourself with kubectl command the imperative way, that means, instead of writing yamls, try to generate it, Refer Kubectl Cheatsheet and Managing Kubernetes Objects Using Imperative Commands for the same. You might also like to check out blog post about kubectl which I wrote last year.

For example,

To generate pod defination, I will do,

kubectl run mypod --image=busybox --generator=run-pod/v1

• Kubernetes Cluster:

• Kubernetes the hard way by Kelsey Hightower, Please do these at least 5 times. This tutorial is performed on GCP, but you can do it locally as well.

• Kinvolk’s Kubernetes The Hard way on vagrant is also useful to study.

• After learning the hard way, for practicing other topics, you can use same cluster or you can use:

  • minikube
  • katacoda kubernetes playground
  • set up with kubeadm (it’s so simple)

• Books:

  • Specifically for the exam, I didn’t refer any books, but if you are newbie, it will be awesome if you go through following books:
    • Kubernetes: Up and Running: Dive into the Future of Infrastructure
    • Kubernetes in Action

Preparing for the Exam: Phase 2 (Supporting Knowledge):

• Learn tmux. Since, exam provides only one terminal window, tmux will help to split screen into panes and more windows, here’s my cheatsheet for tmux.

• Learn how to work with systemd files,

# reloading the systemd daemon

systemctl daemon-reload

# starting and enabling the service

systemctl restart <service>
systemctl enable <service>

• Debugging systemd services:

systemctl status <service>

journalctl -u <service>

Before the Exam:

• Since you can give exam on chrome only, you have to be careful about Ctrl+w which closes the current tab in chrome. To avoid this,
• My friend Suraj Deshmukh (who also cleared CKA on the same time and his blog on experience with CKA is here ) wrote a blog about disabling Ctrl+w which you can find here.

First Minute of Exam:

• Make alias of few commands as per your convenience and put it in bashrc file,

mine were,

k = 'kubectl'
kgp = 'kubectl get pods'
kgs = 'kubectl get svc'
kgc = 'kubectl get componentstatus'

• kubectl autocompletion, it really helps :)

source <(kubectl completion bash)

Finally…

• Thanks to @kubernauts community for all the guidance and help :) If you are preparing for CKA or if you deal with kubernetes, please join Kubernauts community slack, there are really lovely kubernauts who are ready to help you out :)

• If you have any further query, feel free to reach out to me via @red_suraj on twitter or Suraj Narwade on linkedin.

• Here’s my certificate:

All the Best :)