There are two things which I’m dreading most for the CKS exam: writing Network Policies and configuring RBAC under heavy time pressure.
I’ve heard from colleagues that the exam has many questions of this nature, so it will be a good way of scoring points. However, regardless of the exam, the fact that I’m dreading these topics also shows that I’m not familiar enough with them and therefore this is a point where I should improve. It’s not only about the exam, but also my growth of expertise as a Kubernetes Engineer.
With the help of https://networkpolicy.io/ I’ve created CiliumNetworkpolicies for my homelab and the publically available stuff is pretty well secured. It’s not that I don’t understand them, but I haven’t practiced them enough to do them without having to spend a lot of time or relying on external tools. And the time pressure is the biggest challenge for the CKA / CKS exams.
For the weeks in my preparation of the CKS exam I will do Network Policy and RBAC exercises on Killercoda every day. They have multiple scenarios for the CKS, but also CKA and CKAD so there are a few things I can practice every day. I’m told that when I can solve these without problems, I know enough to do the exam questions without problem.
Better than I thought
I streamed my first 3 hour study session live and after I worked through the video module about Network Policies I went ahead and tackled the practical scenarios.
To my great surprise I was able to solve them without much trouble! I was slow and needed to talk myself through the code a few times, but I did manage to solve all of the challenges for the CKS on Killercoda. There was never a point where I was unsure of what to do, or a problem I couldn’t fix.
This was quite an eye opening experience because I had expected some weeks of struggle with this. Perhaps I’m better at this stuff than I give myself credit for. In any case, I am still going to do daily practice with these scenarios and possibly thinking of a few of my own when I run out of Killercoda practice.
Even though I managed to solve the challenges during this first round, being in an exam under heavy time pressure and feeling nervous is going to be a completely different experience. So I want to get this down to the point where I hardly have to think about it any more, I need to master these questions so I can spend my time on the big questions.
This experience has me wondering how RBAC is going to go. We’ll find out soon enough!
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