Yesterday I successfully completed the Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) exam, and today, I want to share my experience with you. We'll divide this post into 3 sections:

1. Before the exam
2. During the exam
3. What comes next?

Before the exam

Preparing for the exam was harder than I thought, especially because free learning material for the CKA is almost non existent. Of course you get two test exams on killer.sh when you purchase the exam from the Linux Foundation, and you also have the Killercoda exercises, but other than that, you are basically on your own.

So how do you prepare on something without any learning material and without spending $400 for the official learning material or some other paid course? Well, I started by reading the documentation. And it definitively paid off.

It turns out that you actually don't need a course as long you got the basics of computer science down. Kubernetes has a lot to do with containers, networking, and connecting various different applications so they can work together. As I took a closer look at my skill set, I realized that I actually know all those things already! I know Docker, so I know what containers are. Networking is also rather easy for me. Because of my background in IT since the age of 14, I already knew about IP-addresses, subnetting, and stuff like this. Connecting various different applications together? Well, that of course depends on the application itself.

But lucky for us, the Kubernetes documentation is REALLY good. And I can't tell you how good it actually is. I think it is by far the best documentation I have ever read. Whatever you need, you don't have to search more than 10 seconds to find it. Their search algorithm is GODLIKE.

So what I thought at this point was this: if I read the whole documentation just once (and occasionally watch a YouTube video or two), I should have all the knowledge to perform well on the CKA exam, right? Well, almost.

During the exam

When I started the exam, I honestly was a bit nervous. I did not do any course, and the only things I did was reading the documentation and the killer.sh test exams. That's it. And it only took me less than 1 month. Others reportedly said they needed at least 2 months to prepare, and that certainly did not add to my confidence. Anyway, I didn't know how else to prepare. I did all the tasks in the documentation and I even set up my own production cluster for my homepage. There was nothing else for me to do.

So there I was, doing all the things my exam proctor commanded me to do. Show me the wall. Show me your desk. Show me the corners of your desktop screen. And on and on. Anyway, I was almost done with the exam, about 70%, and it went pretty good honestly. I was pretty confident that I would pass this the first try. And then, my network connection went down because the router broke for the first time in years. And of course it had to be exactly the day of my CKA exam.

FUCK! That's really not good. I am sure I can just reconnect, right? Nope. After 5 minutes, I finally reconnected, but the exam was done. PSI is really strict when it comes to those things. Of course they are right, but still... it was so frustrating.

The next day, I got the results. Failed. Whatever, everyone has a second chance in case they failed so I'll just do it again. At least now I got some more training down. I immediately booked another exam and this time, I passed with flying colors! I got a score of 88%! More than enough, thank you.

What comes next?

So, now what? Well, I could always do another certification. The Azure AZ-400 actually sounds pretty cool. But I decided that I will not go after any more certifications. I think I reached the point in IT where I should start to actually build stuff that people need. This is always what I wanted to do when I got older. However, I do need customers for that, and I don't have any yet. But this will soon change I'm sure.

To be honest, I never actually tried to find any customers. I was always too busy doing some of my own projects or learning about something new like AI, DevOps or web security. I always felt like I was "not ready" for my first customer yet. But at this point, I don't know what more to learn without some actual Use Cases. So, I decided that I will start applying as a freelancer and hope that someone is in need for a highly skilled DevOps engineer.

If you or somebody you know would like to hire me, feel free to book an appointment!