Like any exam, it is important to understand the subject’s key concepts. These are:

• Cluster Architecture
• Cluster installation (non-managed service)
• Networking
• Scheduling
• Security
• Troubleshooting

The steps I took for revision included setting up a cluster from scratch using kubeadm, I also played with kops a little, but you should focus on kubeadm. When I did this, I also focused on installing networking plugins; at the time, I used flannel and weave, but there are others, like calico, flannel is easy to understand in the first instance.

Core concepts to understand are:

• Pods
• Deployments
• Services
• Namespaces
• Configmaps
• Secrets
• Persistent Volumes
• Persistent Volume Claims

Networking models to understand thoroughly would be

• Services:
  • ClusterIP
  • NodePort
  • Loadbalancer
• Ingress
  • Ingress itself
  • Ingress Controllers
• DNS

Troubleshooting, this is a little more complicated. You should know how the kubelet works, what it’s for, what common config files are used in a cluster, and where they sit on the Linux file system.

I cannot stress enough that you need to do be able to do this on the cli with no fancy guis. Also, the exam drops you in a shell with vi editor or nano, and that’s it, so you need to be comfortable in this environment; if you are not, you will not do well.

Pod scheduling and security concepts to understand would be

• Role-based Access control (RBAC)
• Service accounts
• Network policies
• Pod Security Policies
• Kubernetes audit and logging mechanisms

Cluster maintenance, you should practice

• adding and removing nodes from the cluster
• upgrading Kubernetes clusters
• upgrade a linux machine installed as a node
• replacing expired certificates
• backing up etcd

So this is what to learn, but where can I learn this? The Kubernetes documentation is very, very good. To learn the kubectl tool, you can look at the cheat sheet. I spent a lot of time on this, and it was worth it as many of the questions I was asked had their answers rooted in these commands; I also found using kubectl explain useful for reminders.

Other learning resources

• Killercoda has some excellent environments, and I used these.
• KodeKloud Training has a great CKA course on Udemy.
• Killer Shell has a good run-through of their preview simulator available, which gives you a good idea of the depth you can expect to need to know.

In addition, I set up a home cluster using Raspberry Pi, but if you cannot stretch to that, you can use kops and virtual box to do so. The lowest entry barrier is installing Docker Desktop and enabling Kubernetes there, which will get you started with no fuss and the ability to learn kubectl commands. The docker desktop method, however, is not enough to learn how to set up a cluster from scratch.

If you give all this a good go you should be ready do some practice exams to be sure. One last thing which will be of interest but not strictly necessary for the exam, I always say after this read an article that was pointed out to me by a colleague some time ago and that is Ian lewis’s article The almighty pause container. Honestly I learned so much reading that. Ian also does an amazing job explaining Pods

Today I took and passed my AWS Solutions Architect Professional exam. I’ve been working with AWS now for about 5 years. I Originally passed the Associate exam all the way back in December 2016. Back then I was as pleased as punch to have passed that exam and ever since then I’ve enjoyed working with Amazon’s cloud offering.

Just recently I’ve wanted to cement my learning and pass the professional exam. For me it was about proving to myself I could pass a top-flight cloud exam but also about the learning journey that came with being able to pass it.

To make sure I knew enough I started by brushing up on courses I had in A Cloud Guru and once that was done I purchased a course on Udemy by Stephane Maarek called “Ultimate AWS Certified Architect Professional 2021”. This course was really well-paced and covered a lot of ground, along with the hands-on experience I found this prepared me really well for the exam. After that I read a couple of whitepapers as well and Took a practice exam (which I passed). I am now the proud owner of the certification. I wonder what my next challenge will be.

You can view my badge here: https://www.credly.com/badges/0adf99df-c39f-4c66-96d6-ca67c5830d7c/public_url