I Am Officially CKA Certified Kubernetes Administrator and What’s Next

Introduction

2 months ago, I decided to take Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) after passing Kubernetes Certified Application Developer (CKAD). For this time, I felt more confident and familiar with what to expect during the exam. If you want to check out on my experience and tips on taking CKAD, you can read more on my last post, I Passed the CKAD Certified Kubernetes Application Developer Exam. And YES! I passed CKA too.

Resources That I Used To Prepare For CKAD

In general, I feel the CKA exam is similar with CKAD. CKA is more like CKAD with administration, etcd, upgrading and troubleshooting Kubernetes nodes. I covered most of the resources for the exam preparation in my previous post, I Passed the CKAD Certified Kubernetes Application Developer Exam. So I use the same resources with some additional as follows:

• Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) with Practice Tests by Mumshad Mannambeth, KodeCloud — The instructor did a great job again for CKA. As usual, this course is very comprehensive and covers all of the CKA’s domains. Since I am new with the Kubernetes administration parts, I practiced and focused more on troubleshooting, upgrading Kubernetes version, backup and restore etcd database.

What’s next?

In summary, practice makes perfect. It also helps me to solve the challenges faster. Time management is important during the exam. Unlike my last CKAD exam, I had about 30 minutes to review and revisit the flagged questions for this time.

Certifications are good in equipping foundational knowledge and getting our feet wet. If you are looking for new opportunities, they helps you to stand out among others. I know myself that even after passing CKA and CKAD, it does not mean that I know everything about Kubernetes. I know that it is more complex and challenging in real world applications. As my next step, there are certain areas in Kubernetes that I want to explore more. For example, security in Kubernetes, how to deploy web applications to Kubernetes cluster, how to setup Kubernetes cluster on cloud and etc.

Wish you all the best and good luck in Kubernetes certification exams.