How to prepare for the CKA and CKAD exams, with labs

By LearnSome.tech · Published 2026-11-11

TL;DR

To prepare for the CKA or CKAD, practise hands-on until you can solve 15 to 20 performance-based tasks in the 2 hours candidates have to complete the CKA and CKAD exam. Registering for the CKA or CKAD gives candidates access to an exam simulator, provided by Killer.sh, with two attempts per exam registration. Practise on a real cluster every day rather than only reading, and remember that no exam replaces production experience.

What do the CKA and CKAD exams test?

The CKA is an online, proctored, performance-based test that requires solving multiple tasks from a command line running Kubernetes. By contrast, the CKAD exam certifies that candidates can design, build and deploy cloud-native applications for Kubernetes. Check the domain weights in your exam's curriculum and give the heaviest domains most of your practice hours.

For the CKAD, there are no pre-requisites for the exam. Print the curriculum for your exam and tick off each competency only after you have done it on a cluster without notes.

How should you prepare for the CKA exam?

Prepare for the CKA by doing administration tasks on a cluster you built yourself. Break a node, a control plane pod, a Service and a DNS lookup on purpose, then fix each one from logs and events alone. Then practise cluster lifecycle work: build a cluster with kubeadm, upgrade it, and back up and restore etcd until the steps feel routine.

Speed comes from generators rather than typing YAML by hand, so learn to let kubectl write a manifest that you then edit.

# Let kubectl draft the YAML, then edit and apply it
kubectl create deployment web --image=nginx --replicas=2 \
  --dry-run=client -o yaml > web.yaml
kubectl apply -f web.yaml

# Check your answer before moving on
kubectl get deploy web -o wide
kubectl auth can-i list pods --as=system:serviceaccount:dev:app -n dev

Kubernetes keeps a page that contains a list of commonly used kubectl commands and flags. Use that quick reference as a drill sheet until every command on it is in your fingers.

How should you prepare for the CKAD exam?

Prepare for the CKAD by deploying, configuring and debugging applications on a cluster of your own. Practise ConfigMaps, Secrets, service accounts, security contexts and resource limits until you can write each one from memory or generate it in one command. After that, rehearse rolling updates and rollbacks, probes, multi-container pods, Jobs and CronJobs, and exposing an app through a Service or Ingress.

The Kubernetes task pages suit this well, as each one shows how to do a single thing with a short sequence of steps. Work through the task pages that match your curriculum, then repeat them without the page open.

How hard is the CKA exam?

The CKA consists of 15 to 20 performance-based tasks, and candidates have 2 hours to complete the CKA exam. Train for speed at the terminal as much as for knowledge. A score of 66% or above is needed to pass the CKA, and the CKAD uses the same pass mark.

Set yourself a time budget per task before you start, and move on from any task that runs over it. The CKA costs $445, and that price includes one free retake. Still, plan to pass on your first attempt and keep the retake as a safety net.

Where can you practise with labs and practice tests?

The exam simulations include questions similar to the ones candidates can expect on the real exam. Each CKA simulator session has 17 questions, you get a different set in each attempt, and the simulation provides graded results. Every attempt grants 36 hours of access from the time you activate it.

Save your simulator sessions for the final weeks as a timing check, not as your first practice. Before then, a local cluster you can break and rebuild freely is the best lab, and timed sets of mixed tasks are the best practice test. Mark every task you miss, then redo it a few days later until it is quick.

What does exam day look like at the terminal?

All SSH hosts have kubectl pre-installed and pre-configured with the k alias and Bash autocompletion. During the exam, candidates may use the browser within the VM to open the Kubernetes documentation. Practise with that same alias, and learn to find a YAML example in the docs within seconds.

Exams are scored automatically, and a score report is normally emailed within 24 hours of finishing.

Free official resources

CNCF has open sourced the curriculum around which the CKA exam has been created. For a first look at the concepts, the Linux Foundation offers a free Introduction to Kubernetes course. CNCF has open sourced the CKAD curriculum as well, to guide candidates' exam preparation. Keep the kubectl quick reference open while you practise, and look up every command you had to guess.

From our labs

In the first lesson of our CKA course you read a NotReady node: what the node controller did, which taints it added, and why you drain the node before you repair its kubelet. A later lab has you triage a namespace from one pod listing, map each status to its likely cause, and clear four unrelated faults inside the time the exam would give them. The last lesson is a mock exam where you work a full CKA-style paper under time and review every miss as a lesson to revisit.

Start the free lesson: A Node Goes NotReady Forty Minutes In (Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) Exam Prep)

The course: Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) Exam Prep

Terms in this guide

Sources

Written by the LearnSome.tech team with AI assistance; every fact checked against the cited source.