A few days ago I passed the Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) exam.
The motivation was that I had been using a lot of Kubernetes at work and I enjoy using it in my home lab too, so I thought it’s about time to learn it properly in a structured way. When doing these kinds of learnings, I like to have speicifc goals in mind, and certifications play this role very well. Previously I also got CompTIA Linux+ for the same reason.
The exam was not easy, but with the right preparation, none of the questions were unexpected.
Prior experience:
- 2 years of experience with Docker and Kubernetes
- Several years of experience with Linux (1 year of using it as my daily driver)
Preparation:
- Course: Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD)
- Practice exam set: Ultimate Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) Mock Exam Series
- Practice exam: CKAD Exam Simulator
The exam is very hands-on with a rather tight time limit, so the practice exams were very helpful in getting used to the format. Since the exam is conducted in a Linux environment, prior experience with Linux also helped me a lot.
In total, I spent around a month preparing for the exam, studying for 1-2 hours on weekdays and 4-6 hours on weekends.
Kodekloud video course
I spent the first two weeks going through this course.
It is a very good starting point to kick off the whole learning process. Although some of the content is a bit basic for folks with some experience of Kubernetes, it’s a good and comprehensive overview of the topics covered in the exam.
The hands-on labs definitely helped my memory to sink in, and more importantly, gave me a good idea of what I already knew and what I needed to study more.
Kodekloud practice exam set
The next week was spent on this practice exam set, consisting of 8 practice exams with simulated exam environments.
I have a mixed feeling about this one. I learned a lot doing the first few exams, but the later ones were a bit repetitive and I felt like I was just going through the motions. The good thing about that is, though, it forces you to repeat the same question patterns, to the point that it becomes your secnod nature to type something like kubectl create deployment .... It’s actually pretty important in an exam like this where time is of the essence.
The grading system was a bit inconsistent at times which was a bit of frustration… For instance,
Correct answer:
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My answer (marked wrong):
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but it’s not a big deal since you can always refer to the explanation, and the explanation is usually pretty good.
Killer.sh practice exam
Finally, I spent a few days doing this practice exam. You only get one problem set, so as the website suggests, I treated it seriously like a real exam.
I’ve seen many people saying this practice exam is particularly difficult. I agree that it’s harder than the actual exam, but I would gauge it between the Kodekloud practice exam set and “Lightening labs” (definitely more difficult) in the video course.
I managed to do pretty well on this exam, although I ran out of time to finish the last question. If I were used to the environment I probably could have finished it, which goes to show how important it is to get used to the exam environment with something like this.
The real exam
Passing the killer.sh practice exam, I was confident enough to schedule the real exam earlier than the original plan.
I was a little worried about getting some questions on topics I hadn’t seen in my preparation, but everything was within the scope of what I had studied. I can confidently say that the above resources are all you need to pass the exam.
I messed up with one problem about network policies (accidentally deleted a pod and no way to restore it), but I managed to finish all problems with 30 minutes to spare.
Conclusion
The certification arrived in my email about two days (48ish hours) later. Not gonna lie, I was a bit anxious because of that network policy question, but I’m happy that I passed on my first try.
I think the value of these certifications is that they give you a structured understanding of the topic, and CKAD definitely did that for me. I was a little fuzzy on some concepts like network policies, security contexts, and service accounts before, but the learning process helped me to connect the dots.