Passing Certified Kubernetes Application Developer Exam “The Hard Way”
Having cleared the Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) recently, I want to share in this blog post my experience and some of the tools/references I used to prepare for the exam.
The CKAD exam is not that difficult if you’ve been working with Kubernetes for quite some time now. It assumes the candidate having knowledge in Container Runtime, Cloud Native application concepts and architecture, and Development.
Exam
Cloud Native Computing Foundation, in collaboration with The Linux Foundation, developed the Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) program. The exam is provided online and cost $300 which includes one free retake. I actually got it for 50% off last 2018 Thanksgiving ( waiting for 2019 Thanksgiving for CKA!) but held off taking the exam since I was doing the AWS Developer Certification early part of this year.
Again the exam is online, consisting of 19 problems. Four clusters will be provided. Proctored by PSI, the exam is expected to take approximately two(2) hours to complete. Time management is really a key in answering all the questions.
To register for the CKAD exam, go to https://www.cncf.io/certification/ckad/
The exam curriculum includes these general domains and their weights on the exam.
13% — Core Concepts
18% — Configuration
10% — Multi-Container Pods
18% — Observability
20% — Pod Design
13% — Services & Networking
8% — State Persistence
Resources
I’ve worked with Kubernetes for more than two years now. Initially working with Openshift then moving to a vanilla Kubernetes platform. As per the title of this blog post, I repeatedly worked on an on-prem cluster I built following Kelsey Hightower https://github.com/kelseyhightower/kubernetes-the-hard-way. This really helped me understand the components and services (although this is not needed for CKAD and mostly suited for CKA). You can opt for minukube but I would suggest spinning a new Amazon EKS or Google Cloud Platform GKE clusters.
The Linux Foundation course that came with the package did helped but I found the material and platform too simple. You need to really know the commands and the concepts. I would say going thru the Tasks under the Official Kubernetes.io doc is really important prior to taking the exam. You are allowed to open the Official Kubernetes.io documentation page during the exam but I feel you won’t have the time switching and finding resources if you don’t know what to find and where to find it in the first place.
Memorizing the commands after working on the exercises under this repository https://github.com/dgkanatsios/CKAD-exercises doesn’t really help that much when you are in the real exam. Again, I can’t help to repeat that you really need to know and understand what you are doing and which api resource, cli commands to use.
Check Kubernauts https://kubernauts.io/en/ specifically the Slack Channel for CKAD. You could pick up couple of tips on how to pass the exam on that channel.
This is not a typical MCQ exam like most “highly rated” IT Certifications nowadays. I would say CKAD is at RedHat Certifications ( RHCE, RCSA OpenStack etc ) level where you really need to have hands-on experience working in Kubernetes. Besides losing the Chrome-based terminal connection during the exam (which is really a bummer as I lost focus on what I was doing at that time), I really like this exam specially the debugging and troubleshooting questions.
I hope this blog post/my experience helped you in preparing and attaining your CKAD certificate.
