Kubernetes certified administrator.

My CKA Journey and tricks.

Hello !! learners,

Since Kubernetes is one of the essential tool for container orchestration systems for automating software deployment, scaling, and management.
I was on a journey called ARTH- The school of technologies under the guidance of world record holder Vimal Daga. Where we all got to know this amazing tool called Kubernetes and the concepts associated with it.

After some months, I just thought about giving the exam Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) and started brushing up my concepts.

Let’s divide the exam into some parts.

Exam Overview

This exam consists of 17 practical questions which we need to solve in 2 hours. The passing criteria for the exam are 66% percentage. Every single question carries a different percentage, for example, 1'st question will carry a weightage of 7% or 4% it totally depends on the complexity of the question.

Level: Intermediate
Length: 2 hours

Resources for Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)?

• Udemy Instructor
• KodeCloud Subscription
• You can take any one of the above the instructor is the same for both platforms.
• Install minikube for local practice.
• The Most important is Kubernetes documentation

2. How to prepare for Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA)?

• First, understand how Kubernetes works and its architecture, and its components. i.e Kubeadm, Kubelet, kubectl.
• Then deep dive into each resource and do lot’s of hands-on it.
  Form creating manifests files for each resource i.e Deployment.yaml.(imperative + declarative ) method.
• Below are some important topics.
  1. Scheduling, Labels, Selectors, taint, and tolerations.
  2. Core concepts (Pods, deployment replica sets, Daemonsets, etc)
  3. Application lifecycle management (env, config maps, secrets, side-car container, init-container)
  4. Cluster upgrade (Update all k8s components, Nodes with or without etcd upgrade )
  5. Static pods.
  6. Security (Roles and role binding, cluster role and cluster role binding, service accounts, network policies )
  7. Storage (Persistent volumes and PersistentVolumeClaim , StorageClass )
  8. Network (Ingress)
  9. Difference between ingress and services(ClusterIP, NodePort, Loadbalancer).
  10. Application failure type (pod is failing, Deployment is failing, Nodes are failing, Kubelet not working )
  11. Troubleshooting is one of the most important topics when comes to k8s and exams.
  12. Last but not least JSON PATH .
  13. Lots and lots of practice on kubectl command line.
  14. How to backup etcd.

Tips and tricks for Exam

• Try to use a big monitor/screen when giving exams.
• We need to solve 17 questions in 2 hours so divide the time accordingly to the target should be we solve questions in 1.5 hours and another 30 minutes for rechecking
• There are several clusters in the exam so for every cluster to switch we need to switch the context. The context will be provided at the top of the question and need to be pasted into the terminal.
• Sometimes we need to ssh to another node and then again come back to the master or the base node. Check twice on which node you currently are.
• Be calm and confident.

Sample exam questions scenarios:

1. Launch a pod with image Nginx and expose it on ClusterIP
2. Create a PV, and PVC and mount it on pods.
3. Upgrade Control plane (Master ) all components except etcd.
4. Check why node1 and node2 are failing.
5. Check why deployments are in pending state
6. Create a static pod on node4
7. Create a daemonset with a sidecar container to fetch the logs and store it in a host path

If any queries don't forget to reach me at SUYOG SHINDE

ALL THE BEST FOR YOUR JOURNEY ….