How to pass the New CKA exam at January 2021

The Linux Foundation decided to make some changes to the CKA and starting September 2020 the new format was released. The new exam format is of 2 hours and they increased the quality of questions. Now there are 17 questions and a lot of weightage to Troubleshooting and Cluster Administration :

k8s’ version is 1.20.xxx

Cluster Architecture, Installation & Configuration — 25%
Workloads & Scheduling — 15%
Services & Networking — 20%
Storage — 10%
Troubleshooting — 30%

This is the link to know more about new CKA. Follow this link to check CKAD which focuses only on deploying applications over Kubernetes.

If you are using Managed Solution for Kubernetes e.g. EKS, GKE,AKS etc. CKAD might be a better choice as you don’t have to worry about control plane of Kubernetes.

How did I prepare:

Before I go for tips, tricks and quick links. I would like to quickly address how did I prepared:

• I went through the Kubernetes Fundamentals (LFS258) provided by Linux Foundation when I purchased the exam. There are many labs provided and I did those labs multiple times.
• please go for this udemy course, I’ve followed it.
• I also tried some scenarious over Katacoda.com for hands-on.
• Complete Kubernetes the Hard way once.
• I went through the kubernetes documentation and bookmarked many blogposts and pages. I used alfred to store bookmarks so that I can quickly open them.

Atleast give yourself more than a month to prepare.

Curated resources:

I referred to many links, blogs and tutorials. In the end I narrowed them all to below resources:

• There will be a question on network policy for sure, use this link for netpols: https://github.com/ahmetb/kubernetes-network-policy-recipes
• [Important] To try some of the questions you can get during exam try below guides:
  https://github.com/David-VTUK/CKA-StudyGuide
  https://github.com/dgkanatsios/CKAD-exercises
• I myself didn’t use it but some of my friends found it useful:
  https://github.com/arush-sal/cka-practice-environment
• To understand etcd backup and restore I used this link:
  https://cloud.google.com/anthos/gke/docs/on-prem/archive/1.1/how-to/administration/backing-up
• I found the below link which contains a lot resources. Refer to it if you are new to kubernetes and want to learn more about it:
  https://gist.github.com/strongjz/4c9ad30a12ab715ae94cf72d0e7bbc30
• Practice creating resources using imperative commands e.g. kubectl create --dry-run -o yaml > file.yaml, kubectl run, kubectl scaleand kubectl expose commands. This helped me to solve the easy questions much faster.
• Learn to use kubectl explain command as it can give you pretty good hints and help to use a command during exam. E.g. for network policies I used kubectl explain netpol.spec.ingress
• Always make sure to set right context during the exam. The command to set context is given so make sure to copy-paste it.
• I used below aliases, you can use them with most of the resources.
  kg=”kubectl get”
  kc=”kubectl create”
  kd=”kubectl describe”
• You can use multiple screens so do your screen setup well in advance.
• Always complete the easy questions first. If something is impossible then attempt it when you have completed all other questions and rechecked all your answers.

Use killer.sh to practice the exam. It‘s the CKA exam simulator. You will get somewhat similar experience. Highly recommended for people who want to test their skills. you have to purchase this. check for discount codes

Closing Remarks:

I tried to make this guide as compact as possible. I don’t think you will require any more resources than the ones mentioned in this guide. Truth be told, to cover all the resources mentioned in this guide it took me more than a month.

I wish you best with your certification. In case you fail the first time, nothing to worry about. You can still pass the exam in second attempt. Most of the questions are usually similar in both the attempts.