Certified Kubernetes Application Developer(CKAD ) Exam Experience
I got my hand on Kubernetes in my current organisation. After two months I decided to do some certification on it and that’s when I got introduced to CKAD and CKA exams. After much research I realised that the syllabus of CKAD is much familiar to me and started preparing for it. Last month I sat the CKAD exam and managed to pass with a score of 74% . A minimum score of 66% is required to clear the exam.
What is CKAD?
A familiarity with kubernetes is required to understand this. CKAD exam is for kubernetes developer who on daily basis are managing pods, creating configurations files and secrets, attaching persistent volumes to pods, assigning pods to specified nodes. It is a 2 hours exam consisting of 15-20 tasks. You can easily switch around questions. It is an online proctored exam and is quite costly , it $395 and includes two attempts. You can easily get few coupons which would make it to $316. Also, if you are a working professional then most companies reimburse the certification upon successfully clearing it.
How I prepared for CKAD?
I followed a course on udemy by Mumshad Mannambeth. It is a very precise and detailed course available with labs after each section. There are two mock tests also available at the end which are good for practice. After this course I did more practice on A Cloud Guru platform. There were a set of 12 practice sets which were more close to the level of actual exam. After registering for the exams , you are provided with two practice sets both of them consist of same set of questions. I highly recommend to give both the test like an actual exam. I scored a low percentage in my first attempt and then medium in my second attempt. The solutions are also available after the exam. It took me almost 3 months to prepare for it with a job.
The exam day:
Since this is an online proctored exam , there are very strict instructions. The proctor scans your whole room, your arms , your table. anything on your table or on your arms and even a remote which is kept closer to you is asked to be removed. At any point of time during the exam, if your face is not visible to the camera, the proctor stops your exam. During the exam, there were a total of 16 questions, out of which I found almost 8-10 questions pretty straight, few questions required a little debugging and was not able to do two questions.
After two days, I received a mail stating that I have cleared the exam.
IMPORTANT TIPS:
1. This is a task based exam and not MCQ , so be patient if you are not able to perform well in the start.
2. Book your slot at a time when there will be not much noise around.
3. Take extra time in consideration as verification can take time and there can be many glitches during the exam.
4. Try giving the exam on a bigger screen. Although I gave it on my 14 inch laptop , but it’s a little difficult and time taking.