I got good news today, in that I passed the CKAD exam i toke yesterday :)

CKAD certification

Below are some notes of my study resources and exam tips.

Resources

Below are the primary resources i used to study from:

Practice Exams

As its a practical exam, practise is key! I strongly recommend starting at the top and as you get closer working your way down, with taking the killer_ exams the day before. Im sure theres plenty more out there (especially the github style ones, there all great and well worth going through).

Exam Tips

This was my first lab based exam, so I didnt really know what to expect, with that i had a lot of questions. Hopefully the below is helpful.

Always check your in the right k8s cluster

For each question you are told which cluster to connect to. Make sure you double check it, as you dont want to waste time doing something in the wrong place!

You’r allowed to have 1 browser tab open, so you can bookmark a collection of resources to help you. PIck and choose the ones you like, but I strongly recommend having at least these 2 ready.

Time Management

Apparently the exam used to be 3 hours. That soulds very nice to me! when i was trying the kubeacademy exams the day before my exam, i found i was constantly getting close or timing out (If i hadnt of done those labs i think i would 100% have failed because it taught me to speed up!). Keep an eye on the time and use time management on the tasks.

You can pick and choose which question to, so you can skip a question and come back to it. Each question has a weight to it for how much of the passing mark it is worth. You can also mark questions to highlight ones you want to come back to!

I ended up skipping 4 questions, based on either not being sure how to answer it, or knowing it would take a big chunk of my time to complete it. Once I had completed all the rest of my questions (I only had 15 mins left of my 2 hours!), I reviewed the ones I had missed and completed the ones with the highest worth! I still finished with 2 questions unanswered.

Computer / home setup

I had to spend my first 40 minutes trying to get the exam proctor to view my drivers license. I apparently have a pretty poor webcam and the new UK drivers licenses have very small text. That combined with weird lighting in the room, meant spending far to long trying to all things to align so he could read my name (I even ran to the kitchen to get a cup with water to see if that could help magnify the text enough for him!). We got there eventually thanks to running off and finding my daughters mangifying class!

Make sure your desk is clear. In other exams they were ok with me having speakers on the desk and a mouse mat, on this one, it was a 100% clear desk. the only things i could have were clear water in a cup, mouse and keyboard. Save yourself the stress and effort, get it all off desk before you start, so its not another to have to deal with!

You are allowed to use multiple screens for the exam (Most dont let you do that) which is a real help with having the kubernetes docs open on one screen and the exam on the other!