I passed my CKAD exam. Why and How?
I just passed my CKAD exam. Yay.
Now going through few DevOps articles on Medium (which popped up on my newsfeed), I felt like I know nothing, there is lot more to learn.
This all started back in mid 2020, when I was working on one of my best project, I would say, from IBM, which was for a local FinTech company. We were working on CP4I (Cloud Pak for Integration) and CP4A (Cloud Pak for Application). My role as an Integration Developer was to create and integrate APIs with backend services using IBM API Connect and IBM App Connect, which was deployed and configured on on CP4I. There were times in which I had to collaborate with Backend, Frontend and QA teams along with DevOps related task monitoring how the APIs were performing in terms of response times and number of requests that were being served by our system. During these processes I had exposure of working in a Kubernetes environment and then out of curiosity I started looking into it.
Why I took the CKAD exam?
IBM Cloud Paks are build on top of Redhat OpenShift, which is in turn built on top on Kubernetes.
Red Hat OpenShift brings together tested and trusted services to reduce the friction of developing, modernizing, deploying, running, and managing applications. Built on Kubernetes, it delivers a consistent experience across public cloud, on-premise, hybrid cloud, or edge architecture. — Source
Getting this first K8 exposure on CP4I was something which attracted me to learn more on K8 and DevOps related technologies. I even learned what containerization is and what’s the role of Dockers in containerization. Later on, in my other organization, I conducted few lectures on Kubernetes. Their application was also deployed using docker containers in their private data centers, I suggested them to apply Kubernetes in their stack but then later I myself figured it out that they didn’t have many services to manage and hence using K8 in their stack would be a hastle rather than a convenience.
As a developer, you don’t often get much hands dirty in the DevOps related task because most of the products / organizations have dedicated DevOps teams in place, but its always good to have these kind of skills to bridge the gap between Developers and DevOps. A developer with DevOps exposure is a handy person in a team who can understand the working of both the sides. CKAD is the exam which is best suited for developers who wants to learn DevOps and the working of Kubernetes in the Cloud. Kubernetes in used inside most of the latest cloud technologies and its a handy skill to have.
How I prepared for the exam?
There are three K8 certifications that are provided by Linux Foundation, CKAD (Certified Kubernetes Application Developer), CKA (Certified Kubernetes Administrator) and CKS (Certified Kubernetes Security). Upon searching for online courses with proper course outline as per the curriculum, I found that KodeKloud provided the most comprehensive course on this certification exams. It also has practice lab which is very important for the exam as it is practical based exam and not MCQ based.
The other resource which is highly recommended is Killercoda . This platforms provide you scenario based practical questions which are similar to the exam question. It helped me revise my skills in the last few days before giving the exam. Solving these problem statements are only possible when you have good understanding of the exam content which you can get from KodeKloud as mentioned above. Therefore its good to use these two platforms side by side.
The other important thing which you will read in most of the other articles is to learn to use vim editor effectively. I would say that one should know its basics that helps you to complete the task, going into its advance topics can make things more complicated. I tried learning its advance shortcuts but later figured out that its more than a hinderance than convenience, atleast for me, others may have different experiences. Try to keep things simpler.
What Next?
Next, I would try to get my hands dirty by working on K8 environment. And later if time and opportunity allow, my next steps would be to prepare and give CKA (Certified Kubernetes Administrator) exam.
Hope it helps!!!!!
