My (terrible) CKAD Experience

Today, I took the CKAD (Certified Kubernetes Application Developer) exam and I wanted to share my experience. Unfortunately, it was not what I had expected and I ended up having a pretty terrible time. Let’s talk about it.

💻 Technical Aspects

Oh boy… where do I even start? I had a lot of issues taking this exam.

First things first, my exam was scheduled for 10 AM. I started my check-in process at around 9:55. Now, I know you can start the check-in up to 30 minutes before, so I did not expect to finish the admission procedure in 5 minutes. I also did not expect the system to work so poorly.

Initially, I managed to get into my exam with a single try on the admission process, which was a nice change compared to my previous PSI exams. As I started the exam, about 5 minutes in, just after I finished the first question, I got a pop-up on my screen that my network was unstable. A few moments later the app just closed. Not particularly what I expected, but not the end of the world. I can simply restart the app and get back into the exam, right? WRONG.

I restarted the PSI secure browser app and I ended up waiting over 1 hour to be able to get back in. I must have gone through the admission process about 4 or so times. The first time, the app just glitched and when the proctor finished my admission I was simply redirected back to the start of the admission process again. Annoying, but I proceeded to do it again. This time, I waited around 15 minutes and nobody approved my admission or answered my messages. Eventually, a support representative entered the chat and we talked for about 10-15 more minutes. They then said they don’t understand why the proctor is not answering any messages and that I should exit the app and redo the admission process again, to get a different proctor assigned.

Ultimately, I managed to get back into my exam at around 11:30. As I got in, I realized, to my surprise, that the timer for my exam never actually stopped… I messaged the proctor via the Live Chat feature and told them I find this unacceptable, that I am left with 50 minutes to complete a 2 hours exam, but they did not respond, so I just took my loss and started blasting through the questions. The proctor responded eventually and said there is nothing they can do as they have no access to the timer. 🙃

So yeah… I was left with 50 minutes to do a speedrun through my CKAD exam, all because of their terrible admission process and proctors that ghosted me. I understand that I may have had a network cutout or something of the sort. I understand the app “had to” kick me from the exam. What I do not understand and find inexcusable is that the timer for my exam never stopped and that they did not implement any priority queueing or something similar for people that are trying to get back into their exams.

📝 The Exam Difficulty

I would say the exam itself was fair in terms of difficulty. Given a 2-hour duration, it would have easily been doable to go through each question 2-3 times. As I already mentioned, I was left with 50 minutes only to go through all my questions and I managed to speedrun through all but one. Granted, I had no time to verify my work, but I did get an “initial implementation” on almost all of the questions in less than 50 minutes.

📚 Useful Resources

To prepare for this exam, all I did was go through the KodeKloud Course and Labs. I think they are an amazing and invaluable resource for these certifications. I used their courses to nail my CKA and LFCS as well and I have been thoroughly impressed once more. Everything you need to know for the exam is covered in the course and labs.

Another thing worth mentioning is that if you are taking the CKAD shortly after the CKA (or the other way around), be aware that there is quite a lot of overlap. Taking the KodeKloud course as an example, when I just went through the course and ticked off the labs and lectures I already completed during my CKA training in the previous week, I got the course to ~75% completion.

💭 Final Thoughts

Overall, while I would not recommend taking an exam with PSI due to the issues I faced (both this time and with my previous exams), I still think taking the CKAD exam is a decent idea. It is a valuable certification and a good way to demonstrate your knowledge of Kubernetes. Just be prepared for the check-in to be the most challenging experience and make sure you have a good internet connection.

Ultimately, I am glad I got the exam over with, and I think I did decently enough to pass (I will update this post tomorrow). However, I am very disappointed with the PSI exam process and it was, in my opinion, unacceptable that this happened. I will do my best to avoid taking an exam with PSI again in the future.

I hope this provided some insight to anyone interested in taking the CKAD exam!

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Update: I managed to pass the exam, but I still don’t think that changes anything! What happened is still unacceptable.