CKAD Part 3: Tips

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Exam Registration

Use only Chrome browser to check exam requirements to be able to access all peripherals including webcam (I used MS Edge and it was giving the test is ok although the webcam test was not performed!!!).

Desk / Computer Setup

  1. If using a laptop, add a new screen but disable the laptop screen monitor (Link to disable main laptop screen on Windows).
  2. Make sure the laptop is fully charged and plugged.
  3. I prefer to use a wired USB keyboard, and mouse, and avoid wireless devices, as you never know the behavior of the new terminal and browser.
  4. Please make sure to have an external good-quality webcam with an autofocus feature, you will be asked to scan the room, under the table, under the keyboard, under the laptop, or behind the monitor, it is better to have movable webcam. Autofocus is required as you will need to scan your id/passport with a clear name displayed. I used Logitech C922.
  5. Make sure the room is well-lit as normally webcam needs good lighting.
  6. You will need to disable the following features/applications (Other software might be listed by the browser before you begin your exam session):
a. Hyper-V
b. VMware
c. Docker
d. Zoom

Exam tips

  1. Open the following help pages to be ready:
  2. Direct Link Kubernetes documentation navigation
    Command line tool (kubectl) Doc -> Reference -> Command Line tool
    Kubectl commands with examples Doc -> Reference -> Command Line tool -> kubectl Commands
    kubectl Cheat Sheet Doc -> Reference -> Command Line tool -> kubectl Cheat sheet
    API doc in one page Doc -> Reference -> One-Page API Reference for Kubernetes
  3. Make sure to run the context command before answering the question, you should find a red warning on every question with the correct cluster.
  4. Make sure to use the correct namespace while answering the question, after answering, please verify the creation in the correct namespace.
  5. Read the question carefully, some can be tricky to understand.
  6. Partial scoring is supported. The Linux Foundation will calculate a score based on successful subtasks. Also, they will consider if some subtasks are harder than others.
  7. Edit ~/.vimrc to include either the following:
  8. Short form Long form
    :set ai cuc cul :set autoindent cursorcolumn cusrsorline
  9. Execute the following command to create 20 folders:
  10. mkdir `seq 20`
  11. Every time you want to copy text from Firefox into Terminal it shows a warning “Unsafe Paste”. You can just confirm this. You can also disable this in the Terminal Preferences -> General -> Show unsafe paste dialog.

Time management tips

  1. Use imperative commands as much as possible to get things done quickly, you can add using dry generate the output to yaml file as initial step then you edit the yaml file answering the question requirements:
  2. kubectl run nginx --image=nginx --labels="app=hazelcast,env=prod" --dry-run=client –o yaml > pod.yaml
  3. Try to use short names (ns, pv, pvc, cm, cj, hpa, as, svc, quota, deploy) as much as possible.
  4. Don’t wait for a graceful deletion of objects.
  5. kubectl delete pod nginx --force
  6. Consider using replace instead of deleting and then creation or apply. 
  7. kubectl replace --force -f pod.yaml
  8. Use the following command to search for fields/specs quickly:
  9. kubectl explain pod.spec --recursive | grep -i -B 30 serviceaccount
  10. My strategy in solving question was to solve easy quick questions first to gain as much as I can quickly as I know some topics will require more time to solve or troubleshooting, so I decided to skip and mark quetions of these topics for review later as usually require lengthy changes or validation: Network Policy, Ingress, Custom Resource Definition (CRD).

I hope this post will help someone out there, see you soon, bye.


CKAD Part 2: Practice, Practice, Practice

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CKAD is an online, proctored, performance-based test consisting of a set of performance-based items (problems) to be solved in a command line within two hours. It is not a multiple-choice exam.

You will be given access from a Ubuntu terminal to 4 clusters (Details), and you will have 15 - 20 questions to be answered with different weights. Partial scoring for each exam is calculated so your sub-tasks to achieve an answer are supported.

On Jun-2022, the testing platform received a massive change in the exam environment, I have collected the most important links to show the changes and new restrictions:

  1. Important Instructions: CKA and CKAD
  2. Linux Foundation Proctoring Platform – Migrating to PSI Bridge
  3. Update on Certification Exam Proctoring Migration
  4. Youtube: Kubernetes Certification Updates | PSI Exam Updates | KodeKloud
  5. Candidate handbook (Using PSI BRIDGE Proctoring platform)
  6. CKS CKA CKAD changed Terminal to Remote Desktop

Practice is a must to pass this exam, so the following are the practice resource I have used to pass the exam and my opinion:

1. Dimitris-Ilias Gkanatsios: CKAD exercises: It is free and better to solve once you finish the course.

2. The following are two exam simulators and a comparison between them:

CKAD Killer.sh CKAD k8simulator
Exam environment availability 36 hours, so you can check your answers, plus during these hours your environment is evaluated again (Every 7 or 8 minutes) if you make changes, your exam score will change based on your modification. 2 hours (Exam only), I was not able to check my actual answers with the exam answers
Partial scoring supported as a real exam Yes No, you may score very low because of this.
Answer Explanation Provided, and very comprehensive as a learning mode Provided, and sufficient
Exam sessions 2 Identical 2 Different
Flag questions for review No Yes
Difficulty level compared to exam Longer and more difficult Similar somehow
Price Free included when booking the exam 16.99 - 24.00 Euro
Exam coverage Nearly covering most of the curriculum Hoping for better coverage for the curriculum
Exam typos or issues No Several issues in typos, and character sensitive

To Be Continued ...

CKAD Part 1: Recommended Study Material

If you like to view the video version of this blog post, you can click on the video.
Thanks to Allah; I passed "Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD)" on 30-Oct-2022. In this blog post, I’m sharing my experience with the study path/material required for passing the certification.

Target Audience

This certification is targeting developers (No specific programing language) targeting cloud-native development either used on the cloud or on-premise.

Exam Info

  • Current exam release: Kubernetes v1.25 (Exam env updated: 2022-10-19, Specs: 2022-08-23, as per this tips link alignment with newer k8s versions happens approximately 4 to 8 weeks of K8s new version release date). Kubernetes releases currently happen approximately three times per year.
  • Exam nature: Performance-based not multiple choice. i.e. You will have scenarios including deployment, rollout, and network service you need to perform, or check the existing environment and do the troubleshooting for issues & resolve them. So, hands-on experience is a must.
  • The number of questions: (15 - 20 questions)
  • Exam duration: 2 hrs
  • Passing score: 66% 
  • Time/question: 6 - 8 mins/question, some are easy, and few are hard.
  • Validity duration / Expiry: 3 years
  • Location: Take from home as online proctored.

Pre-requisites / Path to CKAD (Personal opinion)

Officially, there are no pre-requisites for the certification, but I think you need to have a look at the below pre-requisites from my point of view. It is based if you are new in the field, you can skip if you are aware about the content and have hands-on experience. Initially, I selected to go for the online self-paced "Cloud Native Developer Bootcamp" from Linux Foundation (There are always discounts, just you need to subscribe (Free) and you will receive notifications on Sale).


# Requirements My selected courses My opinion / Alternative
1 Good Linux Foundation and hands-on experience focused on Ubuntu distribution Introduction to Open Source Development, Git, and Linux (LFD201) Good preparation course, that was supporting multiple distros of Linux, and the instructor is very knowledgeable and very responsive in the forum.
/
There are several Linux courses in the market, your target should be to be familiar with Linux, Vim, basic bash scripting.

Thanks, Jerry Cooperstein for such great course.
2 Docker Knowledge DevOps and SRE Fundamentals: Implementing Continuous Delivery (LFS261)

And

Containers for Developers and Quality Assurance (LFD254)
PROS:
1- The instructor is great
2- I learned a lot in DevOps while I was learning Docker, and Docker compose.
3- The course is full of hands-on experience with lots of labs.
4- Many tools (Jenkins, Spinnaker, ...) were used in labs.

CONS:
1- I was receiving delays in replies in the forum.
2- I like visual representation in a more structured way as PowerPoint, but the instructor uses hand-drawn diagrams which I don't think are the best in my opinion.

Thanks, Gourav Shah for such great courses.
3 YAML Knowledge Yaml Tutorial | Learn YAML in 18 mins It is a short sufficient video to know YAML, there are several videos on the Internet. YAML is quite easy but the troubleshooting sometimes gets tricky.

Thanks, Nana Janashia for sharing your knowledge with the world.
4 Kubernetes Knowledge and exam-focused course Kubernetes for the Absolute Beginners - Hands-on

And

Kubernetes Certified Application Developer (CKAD) with Tests
I think these two courses are simply the best in the market and you don't need to look for alternatives. For many reasons:
1- The visual presentation is great and easy to understand
2- The courses are full of labs.
3- There are also lab challenges to get you hands-on experience with K8s.
4- There is a lightning-speed test, to get you faster in answering questions.
5- It includes tests for the exam.
6- The instructor is great.

You can see a free sample on Youtube for explaining K8s services.

Thanks, Mumshad Mannambeth for such great courses.
5 Deep dive in network Policies Kubernetes Network Policy Recipes It is free.
Although the reference is considered old; I think it is the best out there, it includes link to very good video (I recommend seeing it first before solving questions).

Thanks, Ahmet Alp Balkan for such a great video, and GitHub repository.
6 Helm knowledge Helm: A cheat sheet Sufficient knowledge in one article to pass the exam.

Thanks, Tom Donohue for such an article.

To be continued ...

How to pass BIAN's Banking Architecture Foundation Certification

If you like to view the video version of this blog post, you can click on the video.

Thanks to Allah; I have passed "BIAN's Banking Architecture Foundation Certification" on Feb-2022. In this blog post, I’m sharing my experience on how you can achieve this certification.


Target Audience (Personal opinion)

This certification is targeting enterprise, business, application, data, solution, and integration architects working in FSI (Financial Services Industry) domain. It is not for infrastructure, technology architects. 


Pre-requisites (Personal opinion)

Officially, there are no pre-requisites for the certification, but I think you need to have a look at the below pre-requisites from my point of view.

Category Pre-requisite Mandatory / Preferred Rationale
Experience Have Enterprise Architecture experience or knowledge, such as a certificate or working experience in TOGAF Standard.MustThe material considers you have knowledge in Enterprise Architecture and multiple domains are classified based on TOGAF standard. Even book chapters is addressing multiple domains and relations with TOGAF.
Experience Having working experience in bank, Fintech or FSI service provider. Must Understanding BIAN artifacts (APIs, Service Domain landscape, ... etc) requires that you have working experience in FSI.
Experience Understanding of ArchiMate as a modeling language. Must It is used as standard notation in most diagrams (Strategy, Business, Application, Composite).
Experience Basic understanding of UML (Class, Sequence diagrams). Preferred It is used as standard notation.


Version releases

I found two versions of the certification in the store as of the time of writing this blog. I wanted to highlight the difference for you to make sure you are selecting the latest version.

The version in descending order Exam Link / Certification Logo Included book version Book publish date Book ISBN Exam price Service landscape version
Latest as of Feb-2022
19-Jun-2021 978-9401807685 Euro: 449.95 V9
Older
31-Jan-2019 978-9401803151 Euro: 544.44 Older


Exam information

  • Current code: BNF
  • Title: BIAN Banking Architecture Foundation.
  • Exam language: English - ESL has no time extension (There is a feature “Language aid” where you can set the language, and the exam engine provides Google translate feature in page content).
  • Open book: No
  • Supervised: No
  • The number of questions: 60 MCQ (Question include negation) (Single & Multiple correct answers (The number of correct answers is mentioned in the question)).
  • Exam duration: 60 mins
  • Passing score: 42/60 (70% confirmed score from certN platform).
  • Time / question: 1 min
  • Cost: 449.95 EUR (Excluding taxes).
  • Exam location: Online (There is an option for an on-site exam, but not aware of the details).
  • Validity duration / Expiry: 2 years.


Study material

Reference Cost Mandatory / Optional Note
BIAN – A framework for the financial services industry 50.49 – 65 USD (Included in exam voucher, no need to pay) Mandatory Certification is based on this book. But, I found the below issues, I hope they can be corrected in the newer version:

1- Some diagrams' resolution is not good and should be enhanced, some of them were not readable. Figure 2-14, 2-22, 2-27, 4-4, 5-5, 5-9, 6-3, 7-9, 9-6, A2-1

2- Some diagrams should be in color (Example: heat maps) and color has semantic but it is found diagram in greyscale. Figure 2-20, 6-4

3- It seems that copyright and the watermarked document are not allowing rotating a page. This made it hard to view landscape-oriented pages.
BIAN Semantic API Practitioner’s Guide Free Mandatory (Personal opinion) The first 3 chapters of this book clarified my understanding of BIAN. Especially “Figure 8 Diagram” which connected a lot of dots.
BIAN Open Digital Repository (v9.1) Free Mandatory Navigating the service domain landscape is a must, and this is the online version.
BIAN Reference Implementations Free Optional Not related to certification rather very good examples of companies adapting to BIAN standard.


Study tips

  • The exam depends on understanding more than memorization.
  • The longest & most difficult chapter of the book "BIAN – A framework for the financial services industry" was "Chapter 2: Explaining the BIAN Architecture", my recommendation will be to read the first 3 chapters of "BIAN Semantic API Practitioner’s Guide" as a start before you read the official exam book for the following reasons:
    • It contains examples for BIAN, that illustrated the idea of every component of BIAN toolbox and meta-model. I missed some of these examples in the main book.
    • Uses simpler English and more straightforward wording than the original book.


Register for home online exam

  1. Purchase the exam from the link (Payment: Credit cards, Invoice, iDeal, Paypal).
  2. Separate email for download ebook, and you need to enter the voucher code for it.
  3. You will be able to download a PDF with your email.
  4. In the same email, you will get a link to "certn.global" for certification and subscription instructions.
  5. It uses the email without a password (It sends a code for every login).
  6. Log in and submit your name details, and agree on some terms & conditions.
  7. Enter “exam voucher code” to activate a new exam.
  8. You will get activated practice exams (12 attempts) & actual exams (2 attempts), these will be valid for 1 year since the day you added the voucher.
  9. Practice attempts of exams are available for 3 months for review.
  10. I have tried the exam on Google Chrome and Microsoft Edge based on Chromium and both were working fine.


Getting exam results

Exam results are provided instantaneously, with the categorization of questions provided. You will be able to download the certification and share it on social networks as well.


ArchiMate and Archi Introduction in Arabic

Thanks to Khaled Eldesouky for the initiative and hosting these 2 episodes for ArchiMate and tool Archi. I hope it will be a useful introduction to the language and the tool.



The slides can be viewed / downloaded from here
Introduction Video
Demo Video