Certified Kubernetes Administrator Exam

A messy begining

It all started when my good friend Pandula suggested we buy the CKA certification exam with the CyberMonday discount applied. So I complied, however, I did not have a credit card (debit cards weren’t accepted) to my name, which was required for paying for the purchase. That’s when I suggested he buy the exam for me as well with his credit card. He bought the exam bundle, except to our confusion he’d been logged in with his account at the time of purchase, resulting in two purchases of the same exam bundle sitting in his LF account. We quickly lodged a ticket in LF support portal (which we’d visit dearly in the coming months when things were going south with our exam preperations). A representative from the LF team got back in the affirmative, and refunded the duplicated transaction, after which we successfully completed the purchase with the “other” LF account.

Preperation, procrastination, and more procrastination

With the exams purchased, we discussed about preparing with test questions, and resources that would be of help. However, we always felt that we weren’t prepared enough for taking the exam, and always kept pushing the task of scheduling and taking the actual exam. This resulted in us pushing the exam so much that we were only able to schedule the CKA exam. Since CKS has CKA as a prerequisite, and we had not completed CKA before the CKS exam validity period expired, we weren’t able to schedule and attempt the CKS exam.

Taking the exam, and the outcomes

Finally, we did take the exam¹, and it was not as hard as we anticipated. With the help of the excellent resources² that we went through, the exam felt easy—once you grasp the concepts, it is a breeze since we get to refer documentation, and command memorization is not necessary, although it can make things smoother. My friend had a connectivity issue the first time, and barely missed the mark the second. I was able to pass the exam, and we discussed that he should try another time, with the CyberMonday discounts approaching. We’ll see how we could get it done.