Hi Team,
I recently took a second attempt on the CKAD. The first attempt I scored 33% and even had internet issues during the first attempt. I took 10 days to go through the CKAD videos again and even gave 3 mock exams I was quite confident after my second attempt and thought I would get 60% easily. But I ended up scoring 14%.
I am thinking maybe I didn’t exit the shells between my questions or I am not sure how does the partial scoring works.
My 3rd and final attempt is in a week. Any insights on how can I crack the exam would be really helpful.
Thanks,
-Arjun.
Hi @arjun1malhotra
If it’s on real exam, I think you need to get familiar with the exam environment, you can refer to our FaQ here fo that.
How did your killer.sh sessions go?
Hi @Santosh_KodeKloud Thank you for your reply. I didn’t take the killer.sh sessions. I don’t think so I have access to them anymore since this is a retake. I could try.
My concern is,
- How do I know if I was even awarded partial marks?
- In my final attempt if I have a question say, create a Job with say 3 requirements and for some reason I am unable to configure with all 3 because my yaml errors. Should I leave an errored yaml or create te job with just 2 requirements? How to score the most partial marks?
- There was question that I attempted in which I replaced a deployment, but after my solution I read the question said not to delete the deployment. Was this considered a 0?
Would love to hear your thoughts.
if you haven’t taken any killer.sh exams, then you still have two sessions just waiting for you. You definitely want to take advantage of them. Use the links from your user page on Linux Foundation and go do them; it sounds like you just weren’t prepared enough for the exam, so you want to use killer.sh as a measure of how well you’ve prepared since your last attempt. Good luck!
Hi @rob_kodekloud That was a great suggestion. I just completed the mock exam from killer.sh.
I gave my CKAD on Friday, May 9th.
I didn’t study at all since 9th May & today May 17th I scored - 52 / 112 on the killer.sh mock exam.
- I feel I need more revision and more pace. For example I want to keep my kubernetes.io usage to minimal.
- This also makes me think about the 14%.
Would love to hear your thoughts.
I think that you need to practice using the docs, since even if the interface is annoying in the real exam, many problems are most efficiently solved by copying models from the docs. The secret is to practice when you do the mocks (and even the labs) looking for the exact place in the docs have the best resources for solving a given class of problem. If you know exactly what to search for in the docs, even at exam time you will be able to do it quickly.
As for as killer.sh goes, when you do a killer.sh session (which is available for 36 hours), you should do the exam multiple times to see how high you can get your score. Yes, you’ll be familiar with the questions, but being able to do the drill of solving the problems under time pressure is what you want – you want muscle memory that will carry over to the actual exam. Being able to solve questions quickly is what you need for a good exam score.
Great! I didn’t know that i can give the same mock exam on killer.sh multiple times.
I will try doing that.
I have a followup question regarding one of the exam questions:
This is from the killer.sh mock exam 1.
Question.
Team Neptune has its own ServiceAccount named neptune-sa-v2 in Namespace neptune . A coworker needs the token from the Secret that belongs to that ServiceAccount . Write the base64 decoded token to file /opt/course/5/token on ckad7326 .
What I did:
#37 didn’t run so I ran #38. In #39 I verified.
This is what is in that file right now:
eyJhbGci0iJSUzIlNiIsImtpZCI6Il94VFg3RGo2aHc3ejR6dERoZ0t1X1NWRVcyWG9yQmdlSmVxMERRa0g5NVkifQ.eyJhdWQiOlsia HROcHM6Ly9rdWJlcm5ldGVzLmRLZmF1bHQuc3ZjLmNsdXN0ZXIubG9jYWwiXSwiZXhwIjoXNZQ3NTEzNDQxLCJpYXQi0jE3NDC1MDk4N DEsImlzcyI6Imh0dHBz0i8va3ViZXJuZXRlcy5kZWZhdWx0LnN2Yy5jbHVzdGVyLmxvY2FsIiwianRpIjoi0TEzN2FlM2YtZWUw0C00N DBmLWFiMDkt0WQyNmZiYjAzYzc4Iiwia3ViZXJuZXRlcy5pbyI6eyJuYW1lc3BhY2Ui0iJuZXB0dW5lIiwic2VydmljZWFjY291bnQi0 nsibmFtZSI6Im5lcHR1bmUtc2EtdjIiLCJlaWQi0iJjZGQ50DcxMi1l0TNmLTQyNz[tYWY4Yy03ZTM0MjVlMzczM2IifX0sIm5iZiI6M TcONzUw0Tg0MSwic3ViIjoic3lzdGVt0nN1cnZpY2VhY2NvdW500m51cHR1bmU6bmVwdHVuZS1zYS12MiJ9.sMiZTQWPBiXkFoWn5IFR Nf18UEZIW-q5MpcNWFKGSy5bFBd1jjIuGKtGTyA1LnLEN961rwfYIQMYyor4_xYil5NQXu1SZrJaNMITLqlx9isEHhyjT7QDH_ХMexTA eiRt0oeYiUMw5KYL7UE-yB4zwP3ZesTLspd-mzmG36e5oeWPbhv401hDnSJpHnAwKoFbIbxK2s_15HmLSdsfwzoFdstWqZ4xdKpVt37y 3gpXQdk1s9EUfdNYaN6CX_XWa35DqRv6bHihCzccGNxQQMPG7_ScbU_6mILn1IsdsomvGdyiakAXdLnWfkPGxtMtUSB0QaPLXbuahYh4
6NvXWLD12Q
But the simulator says this answer is wrong.
Can you help me figure out why?
I’m not sure what exactly they’re fishing for here. But you don’t have to guess: the killer.sh exam has a complete solution page for the problems. If you can’t figure out why it was graded as it was, take a look at the solution and see what they say.
It sounds like the problem has an existing secret that contains a token, which is another way that you can attach a token to a service account. This is described here in the K8s docs. It’s an older mechanism, and does not use k create token.
Hello, It happened to me, it seems that if you execute “k describe secret” , the secret is shown already decoded, you do not need to execute “base64 -d”. Just copy the decoded secret from the describe to the file required.
1 Like
Thanks Rob. your responses have been very helpful!
Yes. you are right. That was indeed the solution.
@rob_kodekloud So I gave my third attempt and I scored 50%. a few questions:
- What does it take students usually to get form 50% to 66%?
- Should I keep pursuing this? I know the material but I am not sure if it’s work to spend more money to get a stamp of approval.
- If I am to give it again how long should I wait to give another shot? I don’t want to wait too long because then I start losing what I have learnt and too soon would mean if I fail again then that would not be good as well.
Hard to answer that for you – that’s a question for yourself. But you might want to try the Ultimate Mock Exams series for preparation, and wait before you take an exam until you can do those at high scores. You should also be able to get your score up on killer.sh, at least to the point you have “muscle memory” for the material they’re demonstrating in the simulator.
Thanks @rob_kodekloud Yeah “muscle_memory” is the next step for me. But that being said I will not recommend anyone else to take the exam. I will definitely recommend someone to prepare for the exam which taught me a lot. But might not recommend to sit through the exam to get a stamp of approval.
I think they should also release the solutions and the score, if I don’t know what I am doing wrong I am pretty much caught up in the cycle of preparation and retakes. Sure the mocks they would say helps but then mocks is not the same as when I am sitting for the exam. There’s a different mindset when you sit for the exam and when one sits for the mock.
@rob_kodekloud So I did give the CKAD mock exam in the past and I just ended up giving one.
The exam software is broken.
- I didn’t get any partial marks for the parts I did correctly. Please find the snapshot attached with this message.
- As soon as I tried to review the exam my session closed even though the clock said 30 mins left which left me fuming because if I don’t know what my mistakes are how will I ever clear the exam?
I am sorry to say this but my past few weeks of experience has made me realize “CKAD is a SCAM” I am not saying kodecloud didn’t help me learn? No. Kodecloud has been an awesome resource but when it comes to taking the exam the LinuxFoundation needs to do better.
