The long awaited exam is finally done. I have been slowly preparing for the Certified Kubernetes Administrator exam since mid-2024 by reading books and documentation and it’s finally realised (and passed!) just last weekend. The exam itself did not start smoothly, which we will go to later in this note, as I will share my experience. While usually people share their tips to excel in an exam (just like I did on Google PCSE post), I will share things that you should not do in preparing for the exam, in addition to my learning materials.

Learning Materials

As a software engineer with a main focus in infrastructure security, I already have some hands-on experience in using k8s (Kubernetes), but I would not say I am experienced. Mostly I only touch k8s to get a list of pods, see its metadata, or to check its status, no administrative experience at all. With that for a context of my k8s knowledge level, the learning materials I used for the exam are:

Books

I started with reading “Kubernetes untuk Pemula” written by Giri Kuncoro, Aris C. Risdianto, and Onno W. Purbo to get the concept of it. The book gave good insights related to k8s concept (like its declarative nature) and components, which is useful as a foundation. Special thanks to Mas Fahri Shihab for lending me his book, and sharing his learning tips as well!

Then, I continue with the “ArgoCD in Practice” book (Liviu Costea, Spiros Economakis & Alexander Matyushentsev), while the title of the book indicates ArgoCD, it is also discussing some concepts like GitOps, again k8s declarative, and other things like RBAC in k8s. For these two books, I wrote my own book summary and special on ArgoCD, I attached it below to show how I summarise things (but beware, my handwriting is not easy to read! 😛).

Closer to the exam, I bought “Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) Study Guide” by Benjamin Muschko as it focuses on topics for the exam. It also provides some case study practices as well!

KillerShell

Very close to the exam, I activated my KillerShell account which is bundled with the exam. KillerShell provides two exam simulators which will give a real-exam experience including its UI that looks like the exam browser. Before activating the scenario in KillerShell, I just realised they have KillerCoda which provides free learning scenarios. I grinded the scenarios made by Kim Wüstkamp which gave me good ideas on how the exam questions will be.

Once almost ready, I then started the simulator which not-surprisingly I only managed to have ~50% score once the two hours time finished, considering my experience. But I learnt from its solution and tried to do it myself afterwards, and it actually increased my confidence level as I thought the questions were doable.

The simulator has a two hour countdown on the UI but it will not stop you from continuing learning until the simulator expires after 36 hours. As I started the first simulator around 30 hours before my exam, I did not wait for it to expire before starting the second scenario, which to my surprise, was very hard, like 10x harder than the first one.

Additional Materials

As every other tech product, the best source for your learning is its documentation. k8s documentation not only provides technical specifications but also has pages discussing the concept of its component. With accessing the documentation site is allowed during exams, it is also a good idea to get used to the documentation, to familiarise where you can find what.

To have hands-on experience, apart from KillerShell, trying to build your own cluster is also a good addition. k8s documentation provides a good guide on how to do it, and I tried to install them using minikube while also exposed to Vagrant when I tried to build the multi-nodes scenario. I also used this environment to do some of the practices from the CKA book.

What You Should Not Do

No Hands-on Practice

Now the main part of this note. You may realise in the previous section that I just activated the KillerShell less than two days before the exam, and that is where I was really wrong about my preparation. I only read books for months without proper hands-on implementation of the knowledge that I gained from the books, which made me still confused with many of its concepts. Even the practices from the book, I only started that around four days before the exam. And as I have duly noted this by writing this note post, you should not do this if you want to comfortably prepare for the exam as 100% of its questions are hands-on.

During the Exam

With the exam conducted on a third-party app, in my case it is PSI Secure Browser. You should install and test the app beforehand (which I did!). You are allowed to check-in 30 minutes before-hand as your ID will be verified and you will need to show your environment. During this phase, pay attention to your browser! Somehow, in my case, the secure browser keeps blinking every around five seconds. Initially I thought it was normal as the secure browser tried to record my screen for proctoring. 

Once the ID verif done, proctor came and the communication is through live chat... I just realised the secure browser did not work properly. Not only it kept blinking but my pointer focus kept losing. I need to reclick the chat-box so I can continue chatting with proctor. I mentioned my issue to my proctor and they suggested that I call technical support. As I thought it was only the live chat that had the issue, I ignored them and said ready to start instead. This is where I was wrong. You should not ignore or not addressing all technical issues before actually starting the exam.

The proctor released the test, the browser was loading, and I was still losing my pointer, and what was worse was the browser did not reload properly. It only shows white screen even after I waited for (probably) around three minutes. I directly told the proctor and they called technical support to the live chat. The support first told me that reloading the browser (using CMD+R shortcut) is ok and I tried, but it had no effect. Then they suggested that I relaunch the browser by closing it (use the red X button, do not end the session!).

Before I relaunched I saw that the app requires additional accessibility permission (previously it was hidden below the secure browser) so I allowed it, but when I relaunched and arrived at the part where I can access the live chat again, I still have the issue. I closed the browser again and restarted my laptop which finally solved the blinking and losing focus issues.

Now my laptop and I were ready to do the exam, I did the second check-in and environment check, proctor released the exam, the browser showed loading interface, but... It has been loading for more than five minutes (I supposed, as there was no time indication, and was later confirmed from my livechat’s timestamp) where it said on average it should only take five minutes on average. I did one thing that you should not do: reload the browser (by using CMD+R shortcut). I thought it would just refresh the loading page, but instead... It throwed me back to the agreement page 🙁. I need to do the third check-in and environment check, and finally after about forty minutes delay I can actually do my exam.

Edit - 5 Jan 26

One another issue that I just remember is, I have mouse pointer issue on the remote deskop where it drifted off to the left a bit. I noticed when I clicked Terminal from the dock but it was the Firefox that opened. Fortunately I got it fixed by got the the browser setting and set the resolution to fit the screen. Something that if you take an exam using PSI secure browser need to take attention to, as based on a discussion on my LinkedIn, I'm not the only one who experienced this.

Forget To Have Fun

Lastly, don't forget to have keep it balance between studying for the exam and having fun! I played some games (FM, of course) and even bought Harry Potter book to keep my book-reading pace whenever I was tired to read the learning material book. Specific to this part, you should be like me!

If you do not want additional anxiety before and during the exam, don’t be like me. But hey, I passed it anyway! 😀