Quick Prep for CKA Exam

2022-07-11T00:00:00+00:00

Having only the most basic high-level hands-on experience with k8s in the past, I thought why not immerse myself a little to prep for the CKA Exam.

First, I deployed a small cluster (1c 2n) on my home network, then took a couple of A Cloud Guru Courses, went through their non-industry certificate of completion, and finally, went through KelseyHightower’s Deploying Kubernetes the Hard Way, a bit dated but all relevant.

Afterwards, I thought I was about ready to begin my first pass at the test. I say first because, they give you one free re-take, and I was pretty sure I’d flub the initial, which I did. The failure wasn’t soley on knowledge of the material, rather, the online exam method they use is a virtual “keyhole”; it’s a remote linux desktop.

Tips for efficiency

Now, I’m a Linux fan, but not a Linux desktop fan, and avoid using the GUI if I can help it. However, the CKA PSI Bridge (as they call it) allows only 2 apps:

Terminal
Firefox

The questions are posed in the left of the “portal” where they give you a k8s config use <cluster_name> for each question, and to ensure you don’t typo anything, copy and paste the strings into the terminal.

Not so bad, but I was used to using my macbook for command-C or V and Command-F for most cut-and-paste. In the Linux desktop it’s slighly different

terminal :
- shift+control+C or V
firefox:
- control-F to search page
- control-C to copy text

Although it’s NOT a big deal, it was enough to fluster me to where it chewed up a good bit of my 2 hour window.

Shortcuts/Aliases

Obviously, time is of the essence here. So, when you first start, get your aliases established:

File: .kuberc

When seconds count on the exam, TAKE A MINUTE or two to get this in your .bash_profile or wherever.

source <(kubectl completion bash)
alias k=kubectl

complete -o default -F __start_kubectl k
export dry="--dry-run=client -o yaml"
alias kns="k config set-context --current --namespace "
alias kgns="k config view --minify -o jsonpath '{..namespace}'; echo"
alias kcd="k create $dry"
alias kcr="k create "
alias kgp="k get po"
alias kgn="k get nodes"
alias kgall="k get nodes,po,svc,ep -o wide"

“Template” the spec files

My first pass, I was hunting and pecking in the k8s documention for examples of YAML specs for the various questions, and this was a HUGE waste of time. The better way is to use kubectl create --dry-run=client .. and modify the output

For example, one question involved creating a replicaset. Now, there’s no way to create a replicaset from just command line, so create a deployment, and modify the template.

kcd deployment foo --image nginx | tee rs_foo.yml
# change 'kind' to ReplicaSet
# remove 'strategy'
kcd -f rs_foo.yml

There’s a couple of other tips, but can’t think of them at the moment, will add them as I recall.

Hot damned! Time well spent

Welcome to Jekyll!

2022-07-10T16:47:06+00:00

You’ll find this post in your _posts directory. Go ahead and edit it and re-build the site to see your changes. You can rebuild the site in many different ways, but the most common way is to run jekyll serve, which launches a web server and auto-regenerates your site when a file is updated.

Jekyll requires blog post files to be named according to the following format:

YEAR-MONTH-DAY-title.MARKUP

Where YEAR is a four-digit number, MONTH and DAY are both two-digit numbers, and MARKUP is the file extension representing the format used in the file. After that, include the necessary front matter. Take a look at the source for this post to get an idea about how it works.

Jekyll also offers powerful support for code snippets:

def print_hi(name)
  puts "Hi, #{name}"
end
print_hi('Tom')
#=> prints 'Hi, Tom' to STDOUT.

Check out the Jekyll docs for more info on how to get the most out of Jekyll. File all bugs/feature requests at Jekyll’s GitHub repo. If you have questions, you can ask them on Jekyll Talk.

Jim Sander (IO)

Quick Prep for CKA Exam

Tips for efficiency

Linux Desktop “Navigation”

Shortcuts/Aliases

File: .kuberc

“Template” the spec files

Welcome to Jekyll!

Jim Sander (IO)

Quick Prep for CKA Exam

Tips for efficiency

Linux Desktop “Navigation”

Shortcuts/Aliases

File: .kuberc

“Template” the spec files

Related Certificates

Welcome to Jekyll!