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Tips for The Certified Kubernetes Exams: CKA and CKAD in 2020

Derek Ardolf on January 10, 2020

UPDATED 05/05/2020: Updated a handful of links based on the April 2020 changes to both exams, having moved to Kubernetes v1.18.x UPDATED 02/03/20...
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Court

Taking the test soon. One thing I would add is a simple bash tip. Something as simple as this could save a few seconds.

vim 13-deployment.yaml # Tweak
kubectl apply -f !$ # Deploy - using a bash expansion to place file name. Less typing, or tabbing.

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Derek Ardolf

Hey! Did you end up taking the exam? If so, how did it go and what things helped you the most?

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Court • Edited

Yes. Passed with a 92 I think. Everything runs together these days. I used the udemy course by kodecloud. I also setup a cluster and played with it everyday for a few months. In the end, the test wasn't bad. I think it's been made to seem more difficult than it was. The reality is that it's a test to show you have a baseline of knowledge on how to admin k8s. It's not some sort of CCIE for kubernetes.

You either know it or you don't. The docs helped, but I think using kubectl hands on was what helped the most.

Oh, and knowing vi is super helpful. It made editing yaml pretty easy. But I did have the advantage of using for nearly 20 years.

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Alok Kumar

Very nice collection of questions for CKA preparation. I also created a dedicated course on Udemy for CKA exam and more than 1k+ people get benefited

My CKA Course

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Ken Moini

These are some great suggestions, I especially like the idea around numbering files for questions. I'll have to borrow that idea...

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Derek Ardolf

It certainly helped me. If you give either of the exams a go: good luck, and please report back on how things go!

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Derek Ardolf

NOTE: Article has been updated to reflect updated links related to January 2020 changes to both exams (which now uses Kubernetes v1.17.x)

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Derek Ardolf

NOTE: Article has been updated to reflect updated links related to April 2020 changes to both exams (which now uses Kubernetes v1.18.x)

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Court

Also, not sure when they will deprecate it, but I like to use --restart=Never when using kubectl run to create pods. That way I don't need to remember the generator syntax.