How I Passed the CKA Exam (2023)

I think my score was like 22 or something and I was really rattled with only a week to prepare [Music] what's going on my name's Steven and this past week I took and passed the cka exam this video isn't geared towards my typical audience so if you're not a cloud developer or looking to become a certified kubernetes administrator this video will probably be pretty boring but for those of you that found this video preparing for or considering taking the cka I'm making this to answer all the questions I had going into the exam as well as my experience how I prepared and how I passed on my first try you might be interested in the cka for lots of different reasons but in my opinion I think the certification makes sense for anyone that is currently or would like to work in spaces such as Cloud architecture devops site reliability or any it involving kubernetes personally I'm a software developer at Oracle working on a container management platform and I wanted to demonstrate that I have the skills knowledge and competency to perform the responsibilities of kubernetes Administrators talking briefly about the format of the exam the Linux foundation's website has tons of details about all the exam Logistics but here are some of the high level things to know as of April 2023 the exam takes two hours and it is entirely a Hands-On lab practical no multiple choice it costs 395 dollars to register for the exam and that includes one retake and two practice sessions you need a 67 percent to pass and the certification is valid for three years I will note that I've seen tons of coupons for a discounted registration fee so I would look around before paying the full amount right away as far as how hard the exam is the Linux Foundation ranks it as an intermediate difficulty but I think that is completely dependent on your experience with kubernetes prior prior to taking the exam as of 2021 the cncf quoted that just under 50 percent of people passed the exam and that's taking into account two attempts to pass there's no official number but according to this excerpt by Chad Cromwell 32 000 total people have passed the cka since it was created in 2017 but keep in mind that the certification expires every two to three years so the number of active ckas is definitely way less now I'll talk about my personal experience with kubernetes before I started studying and then the resources and courses I used to prepare myself like I mentioned I'm a full-time software engineer working on cloud architecture and devops so I've already had two years of hands-on experience with kubernetes in addition I'm constantly working with kind and okay e-clusters on a daily basis so I have access to Cloud resources that most people would normally have to pay for even with that experience I still found the cka very difficult and stressful and it is not for the faint of heart especially if you're new to kubernetes the next big step in my preparation was enrolling in a cka specific course and after comparing the top options I ended up going with the platform code cloud my main reason for code Cloud was a strong reputation included cka practice exams and other Cloud topics that I could take advantage of outside of the cka the course does a good job of covering all the core areas of kubernetes including workloads Services architecture and troubleshooting if you want the full breakdown of what topics are covered and how they're weighted I again encourage you to check out the official website for the certification and now finally after you've built a strong kubernetes Foundation it comes time to actually practice for the exam itself and the far and above best resource out there is the included killer shell practice sessions when you register for the cka your online portal includes a link to two killer shell exam simulator sessions these sessions are pretty much the exact environment you'll have when you take the exam for real with 25 questions multiple live clusters and the same Linux kernel and UI as the exam environment each session is valid for 36 hours and the questions are the exact same each session with optional answers provided for me I did my first session a week before my exam was scheduled and treating it like a real exam without any breaks Googling searching or anything like that I did not do well I think my score was like 22 or something and I was really rattled with only a week to prepare this was a wake-up call for me that made me really focus on specific scenarios that the practice exams highlighted since I had a really good understanding of kubernetes I just hadn't had to do a lot of these administrative tasks before like backing up and restoring at CD clusters I spent the next week grinding away at the 25 practice questions and then went back and used my second attempt the day before I took the cka exam for real my second session went a lot better and I felt pretty good going in but I kept studying all the way up till the start of my exam I know I'm making the exam sound really difficult but I would say the killer shell sessions will be the best indicator of whether or not you're ready if you want to get a feel for the exam before dropping hundreds of dollars to register you are able to buy two killer shell sessions directly for 30 US Dollars my final advice would be to take your time with your studying and make sure that the certification makes sense for your career path and your current skills devops in Cloud are a very hot space right now and this certification could land you a high paying role overnight and the cka is one of the best ways to quantify your technical abilities in the space that's all I have for this video I have lots more to say about the cka exam so if you have any specific questions please don't hesitate to ask Below in the comment section I usually respond within 24 hours it would help me a ton if you subscribe to the channel thank you all for watching and I'll see you in the next one [Music] 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Channel: StevenTalksTech

Views: 3,269

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Id: XXV337LR0qc

Length: 7min 20sec (440 seconds)

Published: Tue May 16 2023