Leaned Kubernetes & passed the CKAD exam purchased on black friday sale

After getting the CKA, I decided to try to get CKAD. As I explained in my previous post , the Linux Foundation has a big sale on black friday every year. It's a very valuable offer because the "Course + Certification Bundles" are discounted 60% with free swag. So, I purchased "Kubernetes for Developers (LFD259) + CKAD Exam Bundle " and leaned on the course then took the exam and got the CKAD (Certified Kubernetes Application Developer). So, let me share this experience and why I recommend this course for administrators, DevOps or SRE engineers.

First, why I decided to take the course and exam even though I’m an administrator not an application developer is that I was just curious and it was on sale. Before I began learning, I thought this is for application developers because of the name of the course and certificate. However, in my opinion, this is for administrators or DevOps / SRE engineers instead because as Argo CD’s best practice said , those manifests should be separated from their source codes and most cases should be managed by those engineers. I’m not sure how they do in other companies but most developers don’t want to dive into the hell of Kubernetes’s YAML files. So, this course is to learn how to deploy applications on Kubernetes clusters practically for those engineers.

Speaking of the exam, this is the same exam type of CKA. As I explained in my previous post , it's a really practical exam NOT just knowledge testing. Some parts are the same between CKA and CKAD but it’s necessary to understand how to put many additional settings into application deployment like periodically execution, ConfigMap, Secret, multiple containers in a pod and so on. I think it’s difficult for some administrators who have never deployed some applications by themselves. Luckily, I’m in charge of managing the YAML files instead of developers and also creating some batches and deploying it by myself so nothing special for me.

Same as CKA course, the CKAD course also has 2 things, one is learning knowledge and another is hands-on labs. Based on learning knowledge and understanding, doing the hands-on labs actually is most important.

Their black friday sale is awesome to get the valuable course and an exam ticket for just $199!