How I scored 93% in Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) Exam

Introduction

The aim of this article is to give you tips to clear your CKA exam.

It all started when I had to develop a POC on Spark on Kubernetes for a business that is running Cloudera managed Spark workloads.

Creating my Kubernetes Cluster from Scratch and configuring a serviceaccount for Spark to be able to request executors through the kube-apiserver, have stimulated my interest into deep diving into Security, Networking, Cluster management aspects within the world of Kubernetes !

I did my homework and I reviewed the following Security and Networking basics that I believe are essential to succeed in the exam:

Security

• Symmetric / Asymmetric encryption / TLS / CA / private and public keys ..

Networking

• Switching / Routing / DNS / Networking CNIs / Docker Networking

Then I decided to take it.

Why bother getting certified on Kubernetes ?

One of the most common ways in which modern software is organised is : Microservices Architecture. And Kubernetes (aka k8s) stands out as hottest technology to build such architectures since:

• It is a container orchestration framework
• It is defining, implementing and pushing microservices architectures and procedures to the limit
• It is open source, cloud agnostic and cloud / hybrid portable

Exam Overview

• The exam is hands-on within a command-line environment. (No multiple-choice questions)
• CNCF has open sourced the curriculum around which the CKA exam has been created to guide candidates’ exam preparation
• The exam is online, proctored and takes approx. 2 hours to complete.
• The exam costs $375 and includes a free retake
• The exam has to be taken on the latest version of Chrome / Chromium…