Tips for Certified Kubernetes Administrator exam

Tips and tricks to pass the Certified Kubernetes Administrator exam.

I recently passed my Certified Kubernetes Administrator exam and I would like to share with you some tips that might enable you to pass the exam.

This is my CKA exam certificate #CKA #Kubernetes pic.twitter.com/b9IWPcT5kB

— Giuseppe Santoro (@gsantoro15) April 2, 2023

Booking

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• You need to allow 24h from when you schedule an exam to when the exam can take place. This includes any possible retakes. Keep that in mind if the expiration date is approaching.
• A trick that I discovered only after have scheduled my exam. If you start one of the exam simulators, your due date for the exam will be moved forward of 4 days. You can use this to get some extra days to study up to the exam.

Taking the exam

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• Official doc
• Exam rules and policies
  • No food
  • Only clear liquids from clear glass or clear bottle
  • No speaking
• You can click on the Launch exam up to 30 minutes before the scheduled start.
• After you click on Launch Exam:
  • You need at least 5 minutes to install the software PSI Secure Browser
  • You need to provide a selfie and a picture of a government id with your signature
  • You need at least 10-15 minutes to scan the entire room including:
    • Under the table
    • The entire table surface including glasses and your phone if you have one. I had my phone in another room to be safe
    • Behind your ears to prevent you from wearing hidden earphones
    • Up your long sleeves (if you are wearing a jumper or a long sleeve shirt)
• No dual monitor or other electronics.
• Try to use an external USB camera to scan the room more easily than the integrated camera in your laptop.

During the exam

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• some useful aliases and commands. Bear in mind that:
  • k=kubectl is already configured
  • Vim is already configured as above
  • Kn and KX aliases are available at cheat sheet (which is part of the official documentation that you are allowed to browse)

• When writing a manifest for a question use the file format <question number>.<resource>.yaml . For example 1.pod.yaml to store a manifest for a pod for question number 1. This way you can leave a question partially answered and go back to it later.
• Before editing a manifest provided by the environment, back it up first with the file format <question number>.manifest.yaml.bak so that you can map the manifest to the question.
• If you are asked to create bash scripts do not bother adding the shebang sequence #!/usr/bin/env bash or add execution permissions via chmod. This is a waste of time since scripts will be executed via sh script.sh
• Official documentation links are provided for each question with the question description. This will save you from searching the relevant page yourself. Unfortunately, you might not be able to find the most relevant documentation in those provided links
• The official Kubernetes documentation has external links pointing to other domains. Since you are not allowed to browse links other than kubernetes.io, and this requirement is currently not enforced via the browser, Before opening a link, point your mouse over the link to inspect the domain in the status bar before opening it. I accidentally opened some external links during my exams but closed them immediately.
• You can flag a question to go back later in the exam environment
  • No need to use the provided text editor to remember which questions you skipped or to write them down on a file
  • Don’t get stuck trying to answer difficult questions, skip them to solve the easier ones. You can always go back to them
• The environment provides you with a calculator and a text editor for note-taking. I didn’t use any of that.
• Useful keymaps
  • SHIFT + CTRL + T to open a new tab in the terminal
  • SHIFT + CTRL + C and SHIFT + CTRL + V to copy and paste

Environment setup

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• Remote Linux desktop
• Firefox Browser
• kubectl autocomplete is already configured
• vim already setup
• alias k=kubectl already configure
• passwordless ssh to other nodes is already configured

Results

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Results are sent back after 24h from the exam starting time via email and via the exam home page