How the CKA exam works

What the exam looks like, how it is graded, what you may use, how results and retakes work, and two study plans for this course.

25 min 1 hands-on task

Key ideas in this lesson · tap one for a simple explanation

What you will be able to do

Describe the exam format, the pass mark and what the grader checks.
Say what you may use during the exam and what gets a session flagged.
Pick a study plan and say which modules you will finish each week.

The CKA is a two-hour exam where you solve real tasks on live Kubernetes clusters. Few people fail it because they do not know what a is. They fail because they run out of time, misread a task, or get surprised by the exam setup. This lesson removes the surprises. Every fact here comes from the official Linux Foundation exam page and candidate handbook, checked in October 2026.

The format

Fact	What it means for you
15 to 20 tasks	Every task is hands-on: you type commands in a terminal, on real clusters. There is no multiple choice.
2 hours	The clock starts after a short tour of the exam screen. It warns you when 30, 15 and 5 minutes are left. It never pauses, not for a break and not for a lost connection.
Pass mark 66%	Each task shows its weight in percent, and all weights add up to 100. Your score is the weight you earned.
Kubernetes v1.37	The exam version at the time of writing. The exam moves to each new version (v1.38, v1.39 …) within four to eight weeks of its release. Check the official page the week you book.
Three languages	Questions come in English, Simplified Chinese or Japanese. The terminal and your chat with the proctor (the person who watches you over the webcam) are always in English.

How your work is graded

A script grades your work after the exam. It looks only at the end result: the objects in the cluster and the files you wrote. The handbook says any method that gives the correct result is fine.

What the grader sees

You

type any commands you like

The cluster

objects and files change

The grader

checks the end result

Your score

the weight you earned

It cannot see how you got there. vim or kubectl edit, one try or ten: only the result counts.
It checks exactly what the task asked. Say a task wants a named web with 3 replicas in shop. The grader looks for web in shop. If you made it in default, the grader finds nothing and the task scores zero.
Partial credit is not described in the official pages. So work as if only finished tasks count. Finish what you start, or flag the task and come back to it.

The exam environment

You take the exam at home, on your own computer. A company called PSI runs it for the Linux Foundation. You install the PSI Secure Browser, which shows a remote Linux desktop. That desktop has a terminal and a Firefox window for the allowed docs. Everything happens inside it: your own terminal, browser and notes are not allowed.

Where your commands run

Base host

where you start; no tools here

Task host

kubectl, k and Tab completion ready

ssh <host>

A cluster

the one this task is about

The infobox of each task names its host. ssh to it, do the task, then type exit to go back to the base host.

The infobox. Each task opens with a box that names the host to ssh to. Some also name a context (kubectl's saved setting for which cluster to talk to) or a namespace.
Ready tools. On the task host, kubectl already has the k alias and Tab completion. You also get yq, curl, wget and man pages.
Root. sudo -i makes you root, which work on a needs.
Back to base. When a task is done, type exit to return to the base host. Do not ssh from one task host to another, and never reboot the base host.
Several clusters. The official pages do not say how many. Expect more than one, and treat the infobox as part of the question.

The rules on what you may use are strict:

Allowed	Not allowed
kubernetes.io/docs, its search box and its translations	Opening a search result that leads to another site
kubernetes.io/blog	Any other website, including forums and GitHub
helm.sh/docs	Notes, books, a second screen, a phone or a smart watch
gateway-api.sigs.k8s.io (CKA only)	Headphones or earbuds, unless you need them for medical reasons
Links in a task's Quick Reference box, and man pages on the host	Reading questions aloud, or leaving the camera view without permission
Clear water in a glass or in a bottle with no	Eating, chewing gum, or anyone else in the room

Results, retakes and booking

Topic	The rule
Results	Your score arrives by email within 24 hours (with rare exceptions) and also shows in My Portal. It does not say how you did on each task.
Retake	One retake comes with your registration. After a No Pass, you claim it from your Exam Preparation Checklist. You must use it inside your eligibility window. If you miss your slot (a no-show), you lose both the exam fee and the retake.
Validity	The certificate is valid for 2 years from the day you pass. To renew it, pass the exam again before it expires.
Booking	You have 12 months from registration to book and take the exam. You can book a slot from 90 days to 24 hours ahead. You can move or cancel it up to 24 hours before the start, not later.
Simulator	Standard registrations include two sessions of the Killer.sh practice simulator, 36 hours each. The exam-only SINGLE products do not.
Price	It changes with promotions and bundles. Check the official page.

What to do the week before, on the day itself and after the exam is in the final checklist.

The five domains

The exam covers five areas, called domains. Each has a weight: its share of the points. Troubleshooting alone is almost a third of the exam. Each domain has its own module in this course:

Domain	Weight	Module in this course
Troubleshooting	30%	Module 5: a method, app failures, the , nodes, and DNS, logs, metrics, kubectl debug
Cluster Architecture, Installation & Configuration	25%	Module 1: components, , upgrades, , high availability, certificates, , , , , //
Services & Networking	20%	Module 3: pod networking, Services, , , ,
Workloads & Scheduling	15%	Module 2: Pods, Deployments, config, resources, scheduling, controllers, , , admission
Storage	10%	Module 4: volumes, PV and , ,

The readiness meter on /cka grows as you pass tasks, and each domain counts by its exam weight. Pass every troubleshooting task and it rises by 30 points; pass every storage task and it rises by 10.

Two study plans

Pick the plan that fits your time. Both cover the whole course: every module, the lightning lab and both mock exams.

4 weeks, about 1.5 h per day	Modules
Week 1	Module 0: all four lessons, and your lab built. Module 1, lessons 1 to 6: components to certificates.
Week 2	Module 1, lessons 7 to 11: RBAC, Helm, Kustomize, CRDs, extension interfaces. Module 2: all nine lessons.
Week 3	Module 3: all six lessons. Module 4: all four. Module 5, lessons 1 to 4.
Week 4	Module 5, lessons 5 to 8. The lightning lab. Mock 1. Redo the weakest domain on the meter. Mock 2. The cheat sheet and the final checklist.

8 weeks, about 45 min per day	Modules
Week 1	Module 0: the exam, the lab, kubectl fluency, exam-day habits
Week 2	Module 1, lessons 1 to 6: components, kubeadm install, upgrades, etcd, high availability, certificates
Week 3	Module 1, lessons 7 to 11: RBAC, Helm, Kustomize, CRDs, CNI/CSI/CRI
Week 4	Module 2: all nine workloads and scheduling lessons
Week 5	Module 3: all six networking lessons
Week 6	Module 4: storage. Module 5, lessons 1 to 3.
Week 7	Module 5, lessons 4 to 8. The lightning lab.
Week 8	Mock 1. Redo the weakest domain. Mock 2. The cheat sheet and the final checklist.

In the official docs· open on exam day too

CKA exam page (Linux Foundation)search: certified kubernetes administrator
Important Instructions: CKA and CKADsearch: important instructions cka
Candidate Handbook (PSI Bridge)search: candidate handbook
Resources allowed during the examsearch: resources allowed

Hands-on task fd-exam-1

~2 min2% weightArchitecture

Write the domain weights to a file

Write the five CKA exam domains and their weights to /tmp/cka/domains.txt, one per line, in the form domain=weight. Use the lowercase single-word domain names this course uses: troubleshooting, architecture, networking, workloads, storage. Example line: troubleshooting=30. The file must contain exactly those five lines and nothing else.

Cluster:kubectl config use-context kind-cka

1
Set up the scenario
curl -fsSL https://codewithmuh.com/labs/cka/t/fd-exam-1/setup | bash
2
Solve it in your terminal
Use kubectl and the Kubernetes docs, like on exam day. Save any answer files under /tmp/cka/.
3
Check your work
curl -fsSL https://codewithmuh.com/labs/cka/t/fd-exam-1/verify | bash
Got FAIL? Read which check failed, fix it, run it again.
4
Clean up (optional)
curl -fsSL https://codewithmuh.com/labs/cka/t/fd-exam-1/cleanup | bash

Finished this lesson?

0 of 1 tasks passed. Your readiness counts tasks, so run them before you move on.

Complete and continue