Cloud-native computing foundation (CNCF) issues CKA and CKD certifications in collaboration with the Linux foundation. Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) is primarily for DevOps engineers and Kubernetes cluster administrators. CKD is primarily for developers. Like most of the RedHat examinations, CKA is a practical online exam and problems need to be solved in the Linux command line. In this article, I will share study tips and provide exam guidance.
Time:
The candidate will have 2 hours to complete the examination. This means, that once you have started the exam, you need to complete the exam within 2 hours. If the internet got disconnected during the exam, you need to go through the onboarding process again to start the exam. The onboarding team will take 15 to 30 mins to complete the onboarding formalities. Unfortunately, Your clock will keep ticking once the exam is started.
Bandwidth:
Note that the proctor will be watching you all the time during the exam via video, audio, and screen-sharing streaming. You should have good broadband to attend this exam. You will be kicked out if the internet speed drops during the exam.
Questions:
But how long do you need to complete the exam? You will be getting 15 to 20 questions from different Kubernetes topics and the exam can be completed within an hour time if you are an experienced candidate. Try to complete the easy one first and flag the complex ones to attend at last.
Infrastructure:
You need to have a room without books, computer and wall posters to take this exam at home. I have no idea if there is an exam center available in India to take this exam. Try to connect one hour before your exam schedule time to check your laptop and install the required browser for the exam. You should have administrator privilege on the laptop to make those changes.
Login to the exam portal an hour before to validate the system requirements. Also, don’t forget to read the important instructions.
kindly check the system requirements if you are planning to take the exam soon. PSI browser detects some of the intel processes while checking the system requirements. I have been forced to stop some of the intel services on my windows 10 laptops. For the Mac book, I don’t think there is an issue.
K8s Cluster environment for CKA exam:
The below-listed cluster will be used for the CKA exam. Carefully switch the different k8s contexts to attend to each question.
Exam Platform:
Linux Foundation provides the ubuntu interface for CKA/CKD exams. This interface is not so good and windows users will feel difficult to use this platform. I would recommend taking the practice exam to familiarize yourself with the Linux platform.
Linux Foundation provides the practice exam on “killer.sh” platform.
Student node:
Remember the candidate/student node. You might need to log in to the different k8s nodes during the exam. At the end of each task, you need to come back to the student node to attend to the next question.
Exam topics:
The CKA exam will test your skills on below Kubernetes topics and weightage. You need to do a lot of practice before appearing for this expensive exam. CKA exam allows a second attempt for free of cost in case if you are not able to clear on the first attempt.
Privileged access:
If you do not have permission to do certain tasks during the exam, gain root access by switching to root. (sudo -i). To exit from the root, just type exit.
Node access:
You will have full access to connect to any of the worker nodes and master nodes. You can simply run “ssh <NodeName>”
Avoid Typos:
It’s better to copy the pod names and context names from the question rather than typing on our own.
Use imperative commands over YAML:
Always use imperative command over YAML. This will save you time and avoid manifest errors. For example, if you need to expose the deployment “front-end” to port 80 with the service name “front-end-svc”, use the following command to listen on “NodePort”.
# kubectl expose deployment front-end --name=front-end-svc --port=80 --target-port=80 --type=NodePort
Always use the help function:
Remembering all the commands would be a challenging task. Referring to the Kubernetes documentation is also not an easy task due to the interface which the Linux foundation provides. Leverage the command line help functionality for a quick solution.
For example, If you are not sure about the command line to expose the deployment to NodePort, just type like below.
lingesh@uamaster1:~$ kubectl expose deployment --help Expose a resource as a new Kubernetes service. Looks up a deployment, service, replica set, replication controller or pod by name and uses the selector for that resource as the selector for a new service on the specified port. A deployment or replica set will be exposed as a service only if its selector is convertible to a selector that service supports, i.e. when the selector contains only the matchLabels component. Note that if no port is specified via --port and the exposed resource has multiple ports, all will be re-used by the new service. Also if no labels are specified, the new service will re-use the labels from the resource it exposes. Possible resources include (case insensitive): pod (po), service (svc), replicationcontroller (rc), deployment (deploy), replicaset (rs) # Create a service for an nginx deployment, which serves on port 80 and connects to the containers on port 8000 kubectl expose deployment nginx --port=80 --target-port=8000
Name the files with the question number:
For some of the tasks, you need to generate the manifests. Try to name the files with the question number. For example, If you are generating a manifest to create a new pod with the image”nginx” for 1st question, name the manifest file “1.yaml”
lingesh@uamaster1:~/$ kubectl run nginx --image=nginx -o yaml --dry-run=client > 1.yaml
alias:
Create an alias for kubectl to avoid typing the complete command every time. During the exam, the first task is to create the alias for kubectl to save time.
Ex: alias k=kubectl
You can simply run “k” to perform all the tasks instead of typing “kubectl”.
namespace and context:
You must be careful while switching to a different Kubernetes context. Sometimes, there is a delay to copy the text from the question to the terminal. There is a high chance that newly copied text won’t get pasted if you are too fast. Double-check after pasting the text to ensure that you are in the proper context, pod names, and namespaces.
At last, all the best for your examination. Based on my exam experience, I have shared these notes. Hope you will crack it.