I passed the CKA exam earlier this week with 92%! It was my first cert and I think I way over-prepared for it because it was easier than expected. I use Kubernetes at work for about a year now, so I did have some experience to fall back on. I'd still say the biggest contributors to my success were my study materials and practice. I thought I'd share some tips and resources that helped me study while it's still fresh in my mind.

The exam is entirely practical and involves completing tasks in a virtual environment, so there is no need to prepare for MCQs. It is taken online via the PSI platform and proctored remotely by sharing your screen, webcam, and microphone.

I'll try to describe my experience of the day of the exam to give an idea of what to expect.

• I scheduled it 2 weeks in advance. Fridays seem to be popular because my preferred time slots were already taken whereas other days were still mostly free. If you plan to take the exam on a Friday, try to schedule a few weeks ahead.
• The exam was 2 hours long and consisted of 16 questions (you may get between 15-20). The passing score is 66%.
• You can start the exam 30 minutes early, but if the proctor is unavailable you may still need to wait until the scheduled start time. I started mine 15 minutes early and the proctor was available.
• You only interact with the proctor via the live chat.
• My proctor allowed me to take 3 breaks which I did not expect. I was ready for a 2 hour sprint so I did not end up taking any breaks.
• There is a check-in before the exam starts. The proctor asks you to show your government ID, pan your webcam around the room, and show your hands and ears to make sure there are no forbidden items.
• The 2 hour timer started right after the check-in was completed.
• The proctor asked me to let them know when I was finished but did not interact with me during the exam otherwise.

The CKA exam covers these topics according to the official CNCF curriculum as of August 2025:

• Storage (10%)
• Workloads and Scheduling (15%)
• Servicing and Networking (20%)
• Troubleshooting (30%)
• Cluster Architecture, Installation and Configuration (25%)

I suggest studying for these topics in particular based on the questions I got on my test:

• Storage (10%)
  • Create StorageClass, PersistentVolumeClaim, and PersistentVolume and mount as volumes to Pods
  • Share volumes between multiple containers in a Pod
• Workloads and Scheduling (15%)
  • Create ConfigMaps and Secrets and use their values in Pods
  • Configure resources for Pods to specify CPU and RAM requests/limits for containers
  • Use a PriorityClass to prioritize which Pods to schedule and evict
  • Create HorizontalPodAutoscalers to scale Deployments, StatefulSets, etc. by usage
• Servicing and Networking (20%)
  • Create Services to expose Pods within and outside the cluster
  • Create an Ingress to expose Services outside the cluster
  • Migrate from Ingress to Gateway and HttpRoute to expose Services outside the cluster
  • Use a NetworkPolicy to limit network traffic between Pods
• Troubleshooting (30%)
  • Format, filter, and sort output from kubectl (e.g., -o jsonpath, --sort-by, etc.)
  • Troubleshoot kubeadm clusters, particularly static pods and other configuration files under /etc/kubernetes
• Cluster Architecture, Installation and Configuration (25%)
  • Install a Container Runtime (CRI)
  • Install a Networking Addon (CNI) and know the differences between the popular addons
  • Install, customize, and troubleshoot Helm charts

I did not encounter the topics below that are commonly suggested to study:

• Kustomize
• etcd
• Assign pods to nodes (e.g., nodeAffinity, podAffinity, etc.)
• Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) (e.g., Role, RoleBinding, ServiceAccount, etc.)
• CoreDNS and automatic DNS records
• Upgrade kubadm clusters

Keep in mind these could still show up on your exam. These topics are good to know either way and I have absolutely encountered them professionally.

These are the two resources I used to prepare for the exam:

• Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) with Practice Tests | Udemy
  • Popularly known as the "KodeKloud course" and "Mumshad's course".
  • I took it last year when I started using Kubernetes at work and thought it was a great introduction.
  • there are often coupons that drastically reduce the price like most Udemy courses.
  • It also came with a coupon for the CKA exam so getting both the course and exam at a discount ended up cheaper than buying just the exam.
  • It was updated with content covering the February 2025 exam refresh.
• Killer Shell
  • Mock exams that are nearly identical to the PSI platform used for the actual CKA exam, both in terms of the questions asked and the virtual environment.
  • You get access to 2 simulators for 36 (consecutive) hours each for free with a purchase of the CKA exam.

Both of the above are paid resources, but there are plenty of free ones as well. I recommend checking out the r/CKAExam subreddit to read about other people's experiences and resources.

Here are some tips that helped me with the exam. Some are from advice I read online, some from my own experience, and some are just general tips that are useful for any exam.

• My single biggest piece of advice: do all 3 mock exams in Mumshad's course and both the Killer Shell simulators and go over the solutions after.

  The questions in these mock exams are nearly identical to the actual exam, so they are worth it for that alone. Plus, they help you practice under time pressure and the Killer Shell simulators mimic the PSI platform, so it feels like doing the actual exam.

• You have 2 hours to solve about 16 questions, so plan to spend about 7.5 minutes per question and check the timer between each question to control your pace.

  • Don't get stunlocked on a question! If it takes you over 10 minutes to solve, just move on! It's better to fail one question than not get to even attempt all the ones after.

• You get partial credits for just creating the resources. It is always better to submit something than to skip questions completely.

• You will often be asked to create a resource with a specific name in a specific namespace (they give you weird names like spline-reticulator). The PSI platform lets you click the name to copy-paste it. Always do this instead of typing the names manually because if you have a typo and put the resource in the wrong place you won't even get partial credit.

• Review your answer to each question and try to catch errors before moving to the next question and not at the end of the exam. You may not have time for a final review, so you can at least be sure you reviewed each question once if you do this. If you do have time left at the end, perfect, review again.

• Know your way around the Kubernetes docs. You will have access to these docs (sans discussions) and the Gateway API docs during the exam. I posted links in the Topics section that I remember using in my exam. Make sure you know how to find these.

  • Pro-tip: Use CTRL+F and search kind: to quickly jump to an example of a manifest to copy for the resource you are looking for as they tend to be scattered in different places on each page.

• Review the Important Instructions: CKA and CKAD to see what the PSI environment is preconfigured with.

  • kubectl with the k alias, vim and nano text editors, and even VSCodium are all pre-installed (which I hear was not the case previously).
  • As a rule of thumb, anything that worked on the Killer Shell simulators also worked in the PSI environment.

• Become very good at kubectl

  • Learn imperative commands to quickly create resources (e.g., kubectl run, kubectl create secret, kubectl create deploy) and be aware of some exceptions that cannot be created with the CLI (e.g., PersistentVolume).

  • Use imperative commands to scaffold a resource and append --dry-run=client -o yaml > manifest.yaml to save it as a temporary file and add any properties that cannot be added from the CLI, then use kubectl apply -f manifest.yaml to deploy the resource.

  • Learn JSONPath to extract fields from resources with -o jsonpath.

  • Don't wait for Pods to exit when deleting them, kill them to save time.

    kubectl delete pod my-pod --grace-period 0 --force
    

• Each question will ask you to SSH into a different machine like ssh cka000001. Make sure you don't answer the question on the wrong machine or you won't get credit for it!

• Use the correct namespace either with kubectl -n namespace or kubectl config set-context --current --namespace namespace.

• There is always at least one "troubleshooting" question that is worded something like:

  The cluster has an issue and is not working properly. Investigate and fix the issue.

  As soon as you see this question, immediately flag it and move on to the others and leave this one for last. Why? Because this kind of question can feel like finding a needle in a haystack and can take significantly longer to solve than the other tasks that are more straightforward. The "issue" you need to solve could just be a typo in any manifest in /etc/kubernetes/manifests and you need to carefully read logs and each manifest to try and locate the error.

  I realized this when I took one of the mock exams and spent over 15 minutes on this question. This made me lose focus since I could not figure it out and I had to rush the other questions as a result. It'll feel much less stressful if you finish the other questions first and then go back to this one with 15-30 minutes left on the timer. 😉

• Try to come up with a comfortable "layout" and spend the first 1-2 minutes of the exam just setting up your workspace the way you want it. I personally had a terminal at the top left, web browser bottom right, and VSCodium bottom left for notes.

• Make sure to carefully read and prepare for the exam rules and policies. The proctor can be very nitpicky during the check-in and will ask you about every little item they notice during your room scan. This may not seem like a big deal, but if you are laser focused and ready to start the exam, this will delay it and throw you off, so you really want to get through this as fast as possible.

  • I have a lot of crap on my desk (multiple monitors, studio microphone, game consoles, etc.) that would be impractical to tear down for the test and then put back together, so I set up a separate desk with a laptop on the other side of the room for the test. The proctor seemed to really not like my main desk in the background and asked me a lot of questions about it. I reassured them multiple times that I had everything turned off but, in hindsight, I should've just covered it all with a bed sheet.
  • Use an external webcam if you can. It's less of a hassle to pan around than an entire laptop.

• If you use Kubernetes professionally, consider waiting a few months to take the CKA exam to get some hands-on experience first. Otherwise, consider using platforms like Killercoda to practice with a virtual cluster. Hands-on experience helped me deal with certain situations faster than I would if I encountered them for the first time on the exam.

• You get a free retake so don't sweat it if the first attempt doesn't go well!

There is also some common advice I read online that I disagree with and would avoid:

• I read a lot of horror stories about the PSI environment being laggy, unresponsive, and difficult to work with. It worked just fine for me and was exactly like the Killer Shell simulators. I am located in North America, though, and I suppose it might be worse in other regions.

• No, you don't need to be a master of vim, nano, or whatever other text editor. I read a lot of advice about optimizing vim settings and mastering hotkeys. Don't waste time on any of that and focus on studying for the exam content instead. I use vim but don't consider myself very good at it and I did just fine with some basics:

  • v to enter visual mode and select multiple lines
  • dd to delete a line
  • :x to save and exit

  I even moved the cursor and indented one character at a time and still finished the exam with 10 minutes to spare.

• Same as above for other speed optimizations like using tmux and custom aliases. You can use them if you want, but you don't need any of them.

• The whackiest advice I read was that you should really spin up your own cluster from scratch with Kubernetes The Hard Way to truly be ready for the exam. Is it going to give you a really deep understanding of all the underlying components? Sure. Can you do well on the exam without it? Yep.