The Path to Cloud Native: Becoming a Certified Kubernetes Administrator

Weeks of reading through manuals, hundreds of lines of developed code, hectoliters of coffee, and a few days of restless nights. Plus a brilliant mind.

That’s how much it takes to sail through the Certified Kubernetes Administrator exam, offered by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF).

What is Kubernetes (or K8S)?

Kubernetes is an open-source platform for management and orchestration of containerized applications in clusters. It can be used to automate deployment, scaling, and management of distributed application components across on-premise, cloud, or hybrid infrastructure.

Initially developed by Google, it was donated to Cloud Native Computing Foundation in 2015. It quickly gained popularity and became a leading solution in container orchestration and management with a fast-growing, active community (see: https://kubernetes.io/community/).

As it’s considered as a solution that can significantly improve resiliency and the pace of deployments, the most prominent technology players such as eBay, Samsung, Comcast, or Yahoo (the full list of official use cases can be found here) use it to orchestrate all bricks in their containerized microservices environments.

Amartus’ customers use Kubernetes to simplify and automate container orchestration, minimize infrastructure expenses, and derive maximum benefit from the use of cloud native technologies within their organizations.

What’s the Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) Program?

The Linux Foundation and its child project, Cloud Native Computing Foundation, which hosts Kubernetes, developed a suite of certification and training programs to help grow the Kubernetes ecosystem.

Currently, there are four certification programs:

• Certified Kubernetes Conformance Program (CKCP) — dedicated to software vendors to certify that their software conforms with particular versions of Kubernetes.
• Kubernetes Certified Service Provider (KCSP) — for companies that provide services requiring in-depth Kubernetes knowledge.
• Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) — for developers to confirm they can create highly scalable applications for Kubernetes. Currently, the exam is under development with beta stage planned for April/May 2018.
• Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) — for individual users, DevOps, and administrators, to verify their skills, knowledge, and proficiency in operating Kubernetes clusters. This is the exam I’m focusing on it this post.

The CKA program is a hands-on exam offered by the Linux Foundation’s CNCF organization. It has been designed to corroborate one’s practical knowledge within the areas of cloud migration, application integration, and container orchestration and automation, and test the ability to solve multiple issues in a command-line environment.

This stringent and comprehensive exam is conducted online under a proctor’s oversight, and its total duration is 3 hours! You can read more about it HERE.

How to Pass the CKA Exam?

It certainly takes a lot of time and preparation to pass the exam, but here’s some help from our team: https://amartus.com/amartus-kubernetes-exam-tips/.

More information about the Certified Kubernetes Administrator program by CNCF can be found here: https://www.cncf.io/certification/expert/.

How Does the Certified Kubernetes Admin Exam Look Like?

• The exam is online-proctored. You can take it remotely from any place with a reliable internet connection as long as it’s a private room, and you make it possible for a proctor to observe you via a webcam throughout the exam duration.
• It favors practice over theory. In the exam, you’re going to prove your practical knowledge of Kubernetes by solving tasks in a command line environment.
• You have 3 hours to complete 24 tasks. The topics are listed in the CKA Curriculum. Here’s the link: https://cncf.io/certification/cka-cirriculum.
• You can seek help, but cheating is out of bounds. The exam console will be loaded in one Chrome browser tab, and you will be allowed to open new tabs to search the official kubernetes.io documentation. The documentation is quite elaborate and covers everything you may need during the exam. You can also google any exam-relevant information. However, you must not search an exact answer to any of the exam questions.

For detailed formal requirements and rules check the official Kubernetes Candidate Handbook.

Amartus’ Certified Kubernetes Administrators

We’re exited to announce that as of February, two of our Quality Assurance Specialists accomplished the feat, so now they can sit down and relax… for a short while before they put all their skills and knowledge into practice in new container orchestration projects. And there are more Amartus’ DevOps engineers and software development experts waiting in line to ace the exam and build faster, more agile solutions for our customers!

Next Steps for Amartus

We will continue to invest in both, our valued engineers and in leading-edge technology initiatives to help our customers realize their ambitions in their digital transformations journeys.

Stay tuned to more exciting news or contact us if you’d like to retain our expertise in this area.