CKA exam and related learnings

As we all are aware there are already so many people shared their stories about the CKA exam preparation and related tips & tricks so in this post I won't go into that but....

Well, I’ve been preparing for this exam for the past few months and have prior experience. I sat in the exam yesterday and got my result after 24 hours today. Even though I had prepared well but due to some unforeseen laptop related issues that I will talk later in this post end up in a situation where till last minutes until I got the email was not sure that if I had secured the passing marks and the reason was that I could only complete 13/17 questions and half way though another one when exam timer ran out. I couldn't complete the remaining questions not because if the they were hard or if I didn't prepare for those remaining question topics but the issues I faced during the check-in (however its not counted) and later during the exam and due to which lost some of the precious time. So here I wont talk much about the preparation and the study material as there are hundreds of related posts available but some less talked about points so you could avoid what unfortunately I couldn't.

Let me put my thoughts and experience into the points,

• Never use your office laptop for the exam even when you have tested it using the exam vendor specific secure browser and demo exam.
• If its worked for your colleagues that doesn't necessarily mean that you won't face an issue so use a personal laptop. For example in my case the PSI secure browser automatically closed twice and then eventually I had to use another laptop to continue with the exam. 
• Use a laptop having bigger screen and higher resolution, this will help you while browsing the k8s documentation site within the exam remote desktop
• Prefer using the device you are habitual as its a lab based exam and you won't like struggling because of the keyboard layout like I did.
• Dual monitor or use of additional monitor is not allowed
• Prefer to use desktop with 24" monitor, you can thank me later once you launch your exam😉
• If you have already uploaded your id during the exam scheduling then you can save some time during check-in process(however this is not counted)

While preparing, review the exam blueprint and be thorough with all the topics mentioned in the exam blueprint, here I should mention that this exam is more about knowing the basics and their practical aspects, practical knowledge of basic to intermediate tasks.

Something that I would like to stress like everyone else, to save time wherever possible use the imperative commands to complete the task or to generate the related manifest files and then modify it as required. Here, please note that considering the exam is in the remote desktop within the browser window so browsing the kubernetes.io documentation is a pain and you would realizes this only during the exam so better to prepare well.  If you are not sure about any option use --help with the imperative command to figure out, practice this well and then you will find it easier.  

Lastly, yes the course by Mumshad Mannambeth is one of most comprehensive and complete course for the preparation of the CKA exam however I would also recommend using the CKA exam practice question scenarios on Killerkoda. One specific that I would recommend is from Chad M. Crowell. https://killercoda.com/chadmcrowell/course/cka, this is due to the reason that it is being actively maintained and you can refer here for how I got to know, https://github.com/chadmcrowell/CKA-Exercises/issues/10.

And if anybody wondering about the exam score, basis on the number of questions I was able to complete its...

That's it for now...thanks

Kubernetes kubectl command help and references

In this brief post I just want to talk about the kubectl command cheat-sheet (now its called quick reference page) and the detailed command reference docs page.

Kubectl quick reference page is where you can find the brief info of Kubectl context and configuration options, how to view/create/update/delete different resources and finding the resources using jsonpath etc.

Start with https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/kubectl/ 

https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/kubectl/quick-reference/ 

In case if you have not checked this yet, kubectl command reference docs page is where you can find all the kubectl commands along with the related detail, available flags and the examples.

https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/generated/kubectl/kubectl-commands#get

Btw, while working with kubectl interactively try using --help as its your trusted friend within terminal because then you probably don't need to look outside😉

Syntax: kubectl <command> <resource type> --help

 

 That's it for now, thanks.