I’ve just finished the exam to become a ‘Certified Kubernetes Application Developer’ (CKAD), which was a fun and insightful experience.
The CKAD is the mid-difficulty exam out of the 5 certifications required to become a Kubestronaut. Ranging from easiest to hardest, these are KCNA, KCSA, CKAD, CKA, CKS. If you’ve already been working with k8s for some time and have experience managing a platform, the CKAD will feel fairly soft and you might want to target the CKA/CKS instead.
Preparing for the exam
Instead of going through the fairly expensive CNCF material, I’d recommend to take the much cheaper udemy course, which is more than sufficient to prepare for all aspects of the exam. It features extensive video material as well as interactive labs to practice your CKAD-relevant skills.
It’s a fairly long course, so I’d advise to skip through content that you’re already familiar with. As for the labs, these are essential to give you that proficiency for creating and managing resources using the vanilla kubectl cli and simple manifests. For me, it was really helpful to revisit these basics because most of my work nowadays uses different tooling and I was fairly rusty with advanced kubectl mechanisms.
A couple of days before the actual exam date, you can take the proper dry run that comes with your formal exam. This is very similar in length and difficulty with the actual exam, and completing that gave me great confidene that I’d nail the exam.
The exam
The exam needs to be booked a few days in advance and is done at home/work in an isolated environment. A proctor will guide you through the requirements and ensure your room and desk doesn’t contain any items that might help you cheat.
It’s done in the PSI browser, which worked without any issues on my Macbook. Be advised though that you may only have one monitor, so you’ll likely be restricted to the small laptop screen (I haven’t tried setting up an external camera and keeping my laptop closed).
Some people online shared that the time can be a bit of an issue, but after the preparation I went through I cannot share that sentiment: The exam is 2h and I finished with ~45mins to spare.
Value of the CKAD and next steps
I purchased the entry to the certification shorty after visiting the last Kubecon in London. Make sure that you get one of the many discounts, there’s no need to purchase it at the official price of $445.
The certification is a nice way to show your proficiency in the topics covered, but naturally the actual experience of managing a platform is much more valuable. I’d like to see applicants having that certification (or CKA/CKS), but it’s surely not a hard requirement and demonstrated real-life experience is absolutely required.
I had the idea of becoming a Kubestronaut (or even Golden Kubestronaut!), but the cost for these certifications and the total time spent isn’t too appealing. On top of that, the certifications are only valid for two years, which I find to be too short.
Daniel Lenz 