About two years ago, I passed the Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) exam as part of my company’s upskilling program. The same program continued in 2026, which gave me the chance to tackle the Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA). The CKA was the natural next step in my Kubernetes journey and is also the prerequisite for the CKS, which I may consider preparing for next.
Why take the CKA as a Software Engineer?
I am currently working as a software engineer, so why should I bother with a DevOps-related certification, you may ask? One could say that the CKAD is enough for my job. And to be honest, this is not false, but it is also not quite true either. The reason why I decided to go for the CKA is to gain a better understanding of Kubernetes’ architecture, components, cluster lifecycle, and other aspects and tasks that are important for operating a production-grade cluster. Even if some cloud providers offer managed solutions and one-click cluster upgrades, I still believe that it’s important to understand the underlying and fundamental concepts of the technology you are working with. This holds true for almost any technology you use or rely on. It’s impossible to be an expert in all tech stacks, but a fundamental understanding and knowledge of the tools you use every day will always be beneficial.
The second reason is that I really like topics around modernization, cloud-native engineering, and especially architecture. During my preparation for the CKAD, I treated Kubernetes almost like a black box and only operated on the client and API level, but the CKA allowed me to learn more about the internal building blocks, design choices, and setup behind Kubernetes. For the first time, I learned how to troubleshoot cluster issues where I previously always needed external help.
My Preparation
I actually didn’t use a lot of resources to prepare for my CKA exam. Since I already had some Kubernetes knowledge and had passed the CKAD exam before, I had a foundation to build upon, which definitely helped.
CKA Course on Udemy (KodeKloud)
Like many others, I used the CKA course from KodeKloud on Udemy as a primary resource for covering the CKA syllabus. I already took the CKAD course from the same author back then, and I was very happy with it. If you already took the CKAD before, the CKA course will feel familiar. There are video lessons followed by hands-on labs that you can do directly in your browser, which I found very useful and engaging. Practicing is important since the CKA, just like the CKAD, is a hands-on exam where you solve tasks in a virtual environment.
I would recommend you wait for one of Udemy’s (flash) sales to buy the course. The value you get out of this course is absolutely worth it. However, at times, the content felt a bit out of date and not always aligned with the syllabus, which is why I definitely recommend combining the course with other (free) resources.
KillerCoda
After I finished the Udemy course, I started with KillerCoda exercises, which are short tasks you can solve for free in a sandbox environment directly from within your browser. All you need is an account on the KillerCoda platform. You can practice as many scenarios as you want, completely for free, so it’s definitely worth checking out. During my preparation, the scenarios by Kim Wüstkamp got put behind a paywall, though, which I didn’t pay for, so I can’t give any recommendation here. However, there are a lot of community scenarios available that I can definitely recommend, especially the ones made by Omkar Shelke. You might be surprised or even shocked by the number of scenarios available, but most of them were very useful for my exam preparation.
Kubernetes – The Hard Way
To better understand how to set up a highly available cluster from scratch, I used Kubernetes – The Hard Way. For the best learning effect, it avoids kubeadm completely, which means you set up all cluster components yourself (certificates, CNI, routing, etcd, apiserver, networking, …). I wouldn’t say it is absolutely mandatory to do this just to pass the exam, but I think it’s still a very valuable experience and helps you better understand Kubernetes architecture. I also learned some new Linux commands while going through the tutorial, so I think there is always something new to learn.
KillerShell
Let me summarize KillerShell in one word: Awesome! It is definitely worth doing. With the purchase of your CKA exam, you will get access to two exam simulator sessions with distinct questions (17 per session). I took the first session two weeks before my exam. After that, I revisited some topics and tried to close the gaps I identified. One week later, just before my real exam, I used the second simulator session. I scored quite high in both sessions, but I’d say that the questions match the difficulty you can expect on the real exam, though not all questions in the exam were as challenging as those in the simulator.
The Exam
The exam is online (remote) and proctored. You will have to scan your room and make sure you have no forbidden items on your desk or nearby. The check-in process was very smooth for me this time. I prepared my desk the evening before, so I saved myself some stress in the morning when I took my exam.
I think I got 16 questions, all of which covered pretty much the whole syllabus of the CKA. The CKA is challenging as it requires you to context-switch a lot between plenty of topics. You will jump between deployments, priority scheduling, storage classes, persistent volumes, ingresses, config maps, resource limits, Helm, CRDs, cluster issues, horizontal pod autoscalers, the new Gateway API, and more. When I finished the last question, I still had 40 minutes left, which I used for one question I skipped and flagged earlier, and one that I wasn’t so sure about. Finally, I went through all questions again, made sure I covered all requirements, and verified my solutions.
Overall, the exam was fair. I really think that the key to success is just a matter of preparation. There is nothing magical about the exam. The tasks are clearly worded, and the instructions and hints are actually useful. It’s just up to you to solve them. In my case, there was no need for super fancy and complex Linux commands or anything spectacular. It was very grounded, but covered a variety of topics, which is where things get challenging, especially under time pressure. Practicing KodeKloud mock exams, KillerCoda, and KillerShell definitely helped here.
I got the results 24 hours after I took the exam. You can view them on the Linux Foundation Training Portal. In my case, I scored 95%.
My Tips
Here are some of my personal tips based on my exam experience.
Don’t bother defining custom aliases: you will jump from node to node (via SSH), and all aliases will be lost as you jump to another node. Additionally, all the aliases you will need (for example, k for kubectl) are already set up. When I reached my last question, I still had ample time left. Defining aliases will not determine whether you pass or not.
Try to get a good grasp of all topics: The CKA covers more topics than the CKAD, so it’s better to get a good understanding of many topics rather than becoming an “expert” in only a few. You can always look up some specifics in the docs or by using kubectl explain.
Get familiar with kubectl explain: The CKA deals with a lot of resource types. Sometimes, it just feels impossible to remember all specification fields and such. The good thing is that it’s not even necessary. You can still consult the Kubernetes docs to look for keywords, explanations, etc. Looking up one particular field may sometimes be faster with kubectl explain, so it’s better to get used to it. I used it at least two times during my exam.
If you get stuck, move on to the next question: Sometimes, a question doesn’t make much sense to you, or you don’t grasp it right away. This happened to me once during the CKA. I flagged the question and returned to it later. On my second attempt, I solved the issue.
Keep an eye on the syllabus: Sometimes, exam topics can change, and course content may not be up to date. Always check out the official exam syllabus and verify that you covered all aspects of the exam as part of your preparation. Recently, ETCD-related maintenance tasks were removed from the syllabus, which is not yet reflected in all courses. Being aware of the most recent syllabus ensures that you set the right priorities.
Conclusion
There we go! My CKA experience was very positive, and I learned a lot of new topics. All you need to pass this certification is dedication, one Udemy course, and practice via KillerCoda and KillerShell.
I hope this article was useful to you. If you are preparing for your CKA certification, just keep going, you’ve got this! I wish you the best of luck on your journey