How to pass CKAD exam in first attempt ? Tips & Tricks in Kubernetes

4 min readDec 3, 2019

I have recently took the CKAD Exam and managed to clear it on my first attempt. I’ve complied few tips on how to clear CKAD exam on your first attempt too.

I have been working in kubernetes environment for more than a year now. Still i found few things need to be focused in order to get this certification.I will try to give all details and tricks that helped me to pass Certified Kubernetes Application Developer exam last week.

Resources from the CNCF

Information About the Test:

Once you schedule the test, you can’t reschedule or cancel before 24hr of the scheduled test. You will get 1 free retake incase you didn’t qualify in first attempt.

Here is the following details about the test.

2 hours : 19 questions
Remotely proctored in Chrome browser plus an extension
Government-issued Non-expired ID Card
Webcam and microphone
Completely practical, no theory. All on the command line
Questions are weighted with a percentage. Harder question, more points

Practice Environment

Once you are gone through the course content, you need to practice practice practice to pass the exam. I used the following platforms to test my skills and relearn the concepts.

Katacoda’s Kubernetes Playground
Minikube: local testing and getting comfortable with kubectl
Google Kubernetes Enginer (GKE): Create a machine and start practicing
KubeKloud : It has great set of labs. Do it at least 4–5 times

Course Content

Use Imperative Commands

I have noted down few imperative commands. It saves alot of time during the test. Practice these command as many times as you can. :D

kubectl create service nodeport <myservicename>
Kubectl expose Pod / Deployment — port=123 — name= Service_Name — namespace= Namespace_Name
kubectl label / annotate / set / scale
Kubectl run nginx — image=nginx — restart=Never — replicas=3
K create secret generic abcd — from-literal=id=1
K create congimap cm1 — from-literal=id=1

Generating Yamls

Don’t try to write your own yamls at the exam.
1. Pods , Deployments, Secrets, Configmaps, Jobs, Cron jobs
These yamls can be generated using — dry-run , — export , -o yaml flags

eg: k create deployment — image=nginx — dry-run -o yaml > dp.yaml

2. Persistent Volume, Persistent Volume Claim, Node Affinity, Node Selector, Service Account, Volumes
These yamls can easily fetched from k8s.io documentations.

Editor

Be familiar with the editor you want to use. In my case , I used Vi.
Things you should know and fast in doing

Find and replace
Going to exact line
Deleting the word and line
Checking the alignment
Save & exit

Tips for the Exam

Kubectl cheatsheet : https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/kubectl/cheatsheet
Bookmarks :
https://github.com/nikhilagrawal577/ckad-notes/blob/master/CKAD_bookmarks.html
Just import in your browser and use it. I have added all relevant kubernetes.io document links.
Context : Always pay attention to which context are you working ? It is correct or not. Make sure, you set the context before answering the actual question. Context will be given in the top of each question.
If you are unsure of the spec or parameters of a yaml, always use `kubectl explain <resource>.<key>` Eg : `kubectl explain pod.spec`
Time is extremely crucial. Try to read the question carefully and understand in a single go. Don’t waste time in reading the question multiple times.
As weightage is already given for each question, if some less weightage question is taking more time to solve , you can skip and come back to that question later part of the test.
Make sure, you are executing the commands in the provided namespace.
Be familiar with mouse or trackpad as you need them to copy paste few names of the objects from the questions and to copy yaml from Kubernete.io page.
Be an expert in terms of Imperative commands . It saves quite a lot of time
Don’t waste time in typing yaml codes. Generate Yamls