CKA Exam Experience 2026

Shweta Bagul

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Aug 6, 2026

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I just passed the Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) with an 84% score — on my third attempt, after two earlier tries that didn’t go my way. It feels damn good to finally get there. After about 3 months of study, I wanted to give back with a detailed article, as it might help someone who’s preparing for it.

Background: I had little to no hands-on experience with Kubernetes going in. I was familiar with the basic concepts and had done a few POCs, which is not enough if you aspire to handle large, production-grade environments.

Resources I Referred To

• Mumshad’s Course (Udemy) — https://udemy.com/course/certified-kubernetes-administrator-with-practice-tests/ — for all the basics and key concepts
• Killercoda.com — https://killercoda.com/ — absolutely critical. The terminal-in-browser environment is identical to the exam. I lived here.
• Theplatformlab(Github) — https://github.com/theplatformlab/CKA-Certified-Kubernetes-Administrator — OG material for cheatsheets & imperative commands!
• CloudWithVarjosh on YouTube — https://www.youtube.com/@CloudWithVarjosh — a hidden gem for getting to know the concepts thoroughly
• Official Kubernetes Documentation — https://kubernetes.io/ — the only book you need!

Things I wish I’d have done earlier

Started hands-on practice sooner. Once I started studying, I spent a lot of time going through documentation and reading rather than working on practical labs. My advice: just read about the key concept and start practicing. You’ll learn along the way once you start with the practical labs.

Used imperative commands earlier in my practice, rather than only referring to official documentation and hand-writing resource YAMLs. Believe me, you’ll save a lot of time if you create resources using imperative cmd -o yaml > resource.yaml rather than navigating the docs and building the YAML from scratch. kubectl run,kubectl create, kubectl expose, and kubectl edit are the saviours!

Practiced with the correct vim terminal settings. Vim will be your best friend on exam day. The PSI browser terminal is laggy and slow, and you may run into real problems if you use VSCodium instead — I made that mistake in my first attempt, and it was sluggish and painfully slow to open files or render text.

Practiced JSON formatting as much as possible — it makes patching and other imperative commands much easier.

Knew the docs well. Make sure you know exactly which page you need for each resource. For example, you might know to check the Gateway API reference for Gateway API references generally, but setting up a Gateway with TLS enabled might need something more specific, like the Gateway API v1.5 release notes.

Knew Linux arithmetic commands. If you hit a resource-quota-distribution task, the exam provides a built-in calculator and notepad — but I found it laggy and frustrating to use. You’re better off using Linux arithmetic, like expr or the built-in $(( )) shell expansion.

Exam Breakdown & Topics to cover:

The exam comprised 16 performance-based tasks. The most challenging ones for me were:

• Networking: NetworkPolicy (classic), and Gateway API using TLS & HTTPRoute
• Operations: Installing a CNI, Troubleshooting (e.g., fix the API server), Helm (know --set install.CRDs=true vs --skip-crds ).
• Workloads: Sidecar containers, Resource quotas, HPA , PriorityClass (patching required)
• Storage: PV, PVC, StorageClass (had to patch one to make it default).
• Configuration: CRD (cert-manager came up), ConfigMap (e.g., configuring TLS versions).

Exam Setup:

• One active monitor (built-in or external) — dual monitors are not supported.
• The Linux Foundation recommends a screen size of 15" or higher to support the Exam UI, and a resolution of 1080p. If you’re on a smaller screen, you’ll lose time unnecessarily readjusting scrollbars.
• I used an external monitor with an external webcam, and disabled my built-in display (I used Crisp — you can also use BetterDisplay or enable Clamshell mode if using mac).
• Automated gaze detection is active during proctoring. Keep your gaze straight into the monitor, and adjust your webcam accordingly.

Practical Exam Tips:

• Flag questions liberally. If a question takes more than 2–3 minutes to implement, flag it and come back later.
• Use a two-pass strategy. Go through everything as fast as possible on the first pass and score the easy points — several questions can be knocked out with a single imperative command (SC creation, HPA creation, etc.). Crash through those first. On the second pass, you’ll have the mental relief of already having those points locked in.
• Set your vim shortcuts immediately when you open a file, to avoid indentation and formatting errors:

:set sw=2 et ts=2 ai
:set paste
:set nopaste

Two failed attempts felt discouraging at the time, but looking back, each one showed me exactly what I needed to fix. If you’re in that spot right now, don’t stop — you’re closer than you think. Feel free to drop your questions below if you’re prepping for the CKA. Happy Learning!