Tips and Tricks

Before the Exam

Important Instructions

System Compatibility Check

All information is on this page of the Linux Foundation site, to be done a few days before the exam.

Simulators:

Interactive online scenarios for CKA
Interactive online scenarios for CKAD
Two Simulator sessions are offered with CKA and CKAD, they are more complex than the actual exams and provide excellent training.

Documentation Access

For CKA and CKAD exams, you are allowed to use certain websites and documentation to search for terminology and find answers to your questions. Here are the authorized sites:

Developing good knowledge of these documents can help you gain agility and speed during the exam. Additionally, these documents will help you develop a solid foundation in Kubernetes. Use these sites only to search for concepts and tools, and prepare your answers. Also learn to use the search functions effectively throughout the K8s documentation and bookmark all relevant and useful pages.

On Exam Day

The commands described here will certainly be useful:

kubectl Quick Reference from the official documentation (accessible during the exam)
Essential kubectl commands
Linux tips and tricks

Contexts

It is recommended to use kubectx in production but this tool is not available during the exam. Here are the main context management commands to know:

# List contexts
kubectl config get-contexts
# Switch context
kubectl config set-context <context-name>
# Modify current context, here to work in namespace <my-namespace>
kubectl config set-context  --current --namespace <my-namespace>

Pre-configuration

Once you have access to your terminal, it may be wise to spend about 1 minute configuring your environment. You can set these elements:

alias k=kubectl # will already be pre-configured

export do="--dry-run=client -o yaml"
# k get pod x $do

export now="--force --grace-period 0"
# k delete pod x $now

Vim

For vim to use 2 spaces for a tab, edit ~/.vimrc to add:

set tabstop=2
set expandtab
set shiftwidth=2