Hello everyone! Following my previous CKAD renewal review, I’m back with the second part of my journey towards becoming a ‘Golden Kuberstronaut’: my CKA (Certified Kubernetes Administrator) certification renewal review.
This CKA exam, in particular, has many changes applied from February 2025, so I have a lot of content I definitely want to share with those who are preparing for it anew. From the nerve-wracking exam environment issues to the drastically changed question types, I will now explain everything in detail!
π± 1. Changes in the Exam Environment and Nerve-Wracking Issues
The notorious bug in the PSI secure browser that many people mentioned in overseas communities… I couldn’t avoid it either.
As soon as the exam started, the browser updated to version 8.1.0, and just 30 minutes into the total 2-hour exam time, the copy/paste (Ctrl+C, Ctrl+V) function stopped working. π
In the CKA exam, copy/paste is an almost essential function because you need to accurately use long strings such as contexts, node names, and pod names provided in the questions. When it didn’t work, I felt truly helpless.
The proctor suggested solutions like refreshing the page or making an international phone call, but precious 5-10 minutes were lost in this process. Ultimately, to prevent the exam flow from being interrupted, I left a message in the chat window saying “I don’t need to paste.” and started solving the remaining problems, relying on my accumulated Kubernetes operational experience.
Fortunately, most problems could be solved by typing directly, but the inability to re-examine ambiguous problems due to time constraints caused by the copy/paste issue remains a great regret.
π 2. The 2025 CKA Exam: Here’s How It Changed!
I got the impression that this exam has shifted, with some content from the previous CKA moving to CKAD, and a deeper focus on CKA’s inherent administrative functions. The main changes I experienced are as follows:
- π Deep Dive into CRI and CNI Questions were asked that assessed in-depth administrative capabilities, such as directly handling the configuration and settings of the Container Runtime Interface (CRI), or selecting and installing the most suitable Container Network Interface (CNI) plugin for a given environment.
- Advanced Helm Usage Skills It required an understanding beyond basic commands like update, install, and uninstall. For example, practical problems were posed, such as finding and modifying CRD (Custom Resource Definition) related options within the values.yaml of an ArgoCD Helm chart to remove a specific CRD while keeping other components of the chart intact. Helm template management skills have also become important.
- π Changes in CRD and API Documentation Usage Instead of referring to official documentation via a web browser as usual, there was a somewhat unfamiliar type of problem that required extracting documentation for specific features directly from API resources using commands like kubectl explain and saving it as a YAML file. The ability to find and utilize documentation within the terminal has become important.
- π CRI-based Control Plane Disaster Recovery Control plane disaster recovery scenarios have shifted from the existing Docker-based environment to a CRI (Container Runtime Interface)-based environment. Accordingly, the ability to diagnose and resolve container issues using crictl commands was essential.
- πͺ Emergence of Gateway API It was very impressive that questions related to the Gateway API, which emerged to improve the limitations of the existing Ingress, were included. As this is a cutting-edge technology officially released in October 2023 and seeing expanded support from major clouds like GKE, AWS, and Azure, it shows that the CKA exam quickly reflects current technological trends. An understanding of Gateway and HTTPRoute resources is required.
- β Absence of ETCD Backup/Restore Problems The ETCD backup and restore problem, a frequent question that appeared almost every time until previous exams, was not included in this exam. Of course, it could reappear at any time, so learning is still necessary, but it’s good to note that the exam’s focus is shifting.
β¨ 3. Overall Review
Honestly, I felt that popular simulators like killer.sh didn’t perfectly prepare me for the actual exam environment and the new question types in this CKA exam. Despite facing the double challenge of the copy/paste function issue and significantly changed exam content, I fortunately achieved a good result: Pass! π
For those newly preparing for CKA, please make sure to familiarize yourselves with the changes I’ve summarized above. Especially if you deeply study advanced Helm features, the use of crictl commands, and the latest technology, Gateway API, you will surely achieve good results.
I wish everyone success in obtaining their certification!
CKA, Kubernetes, Kubernetes, Certification, Certification, CloudNative, DevOps, CKA Exam, CKA Review
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