Dear readers, I made it! During Cyber Week, I decided to become a Golden Kubestronaut, and finally I made it! It's a proud feeling to achieve something that only a bit more than 300 people have achieved before.

Exam overview

You can read a lot of details about the proctored exams in my Kubestronaut blog post.

To become a Golden Kubestronaut, you must first hold the Kubestronaut title. Once you have it, you don’t need to take any further action to receive your perks.

Golden Kubestronaut perks

As a Golden Kubestronaut, you currently receive a backpack, a beanie, and a 60% discount on each new CNCF certification. In addition, you will receive one free ticket per year to a Kubernetes Community Days event and a 50% discount on KubeCon registration. Your Golden Kubestronaut status is lifelong. However, your Kubestronaut title may expire if you do not re-certify. As long as you maintain your Kubestronaut title, you will also enjoy a ThriveOne subscription.

But how did it go? A retrospective diary.

February 9th, I already had a short peek into the Istio certification course at KodeKloud when I was preparing for the CKS exam. Now it was time to proceed with the preparations for the ICA exam. I rushed through the course at 2x video speed as usual, did all labs and mock exams, and felt prepared. And yet again, 24 hours waiting for the registration. For the Microsoft exams, I sometimes booked the exam basically right before I wanted to start, but the Linux Foundation requires 24h for some reason. It was already late when I put away the laptop. So the exam for the 11th it is. Time for another hands-on exam.

February 10th, I started to use the waiting time for the exam to start with the LFCS exam. Unlike the LPIC certifications, this is a hands-on exam. So you actually have to solve tasks on a machine. And if you don't want to learn iptables commands by heart, you need to know how to find them on the system. The only allowed resources for this exam are docs and man pages on the system or provided by any package of the Linux distribution. For me the LFCS preparation was quite easy, given the fact that I have been working on Linux machines for 25 years now. But at the same time it was challenging, as I hadn't run a manual useradd command for years. Usually I used Ansible for these kinds of tasks, and I realized how often I actually used Google instead of man pages. Anyway, most of the exam was just a refresh.

February 11th, I passed the ICA exam. Although I never worked with Istio in a production environment, it was quite easy to handle, thanks to the labs in the course and the documentation. One done, nine to go.

February 12th and 13th, watching course videos and exams, nothing out of the ordinary, just relaxed studying. Finishing up the sessions with the Killer.sh simulator. There's none for the ICA exam, but at least one version for the LFCS. Even though the KodeKloud courses have mock exams, the Killer.sh simulator is basically your final check. It's usually harder than the actual exam, the type of questions are quite close and you have to solve tasks in multiple different environments.

February 14th, day of the LFCS exam. Let's get this done! After I finished the exam, I basically started to proceed with the PCA exam preparations straight away. For a freelancer, you usually go with the client's needs, and a lot of projects request good knowledge of Prometheus these days. So doing the PCA exam was basically the logical consequence of this.

I was still watching videos and doing labs when I realized that the CNPE exam was becoming a part of the Golden Kubestronaut program on March 1st. The Certified Cloud Native Platform Engineer is a tough performance-based exam. I wasn't worried about this in general, but there was no course on KodeKloud and hardly any information about it so far. So I decided to finish up the path before March 1st and to use the free ThriveOne subscription to prepare for the CNPE exam, which was already part of my purchased Kubestronaut to Golden Kubestronaut bundle.

February 15th, PASSED the LFCS with a straight 100%. PCA exam booked. Starting to prepare for the CGOA (Certified GitOps Associate) exam. 8 left.

February 16th, while I was waiting for the PCA exam, I was still working on finalizing my CGOA preparations. The CGOA exam is a multiple-choice exam and the KodeKloud course is pretty much focused on Argo with a lot of labs. With some experience in DevOps and a good understanding of what GitOps means, it's not too hard. Once I had finished the CGOA preparations, I started with the CAPA course. As mentioned, the CGOA course was pretty much focused on Argo anyway, so I was confident that this would be a good choice. After I finished the PCA exam, I proceeded and booked the CGOA exam. 30% golden.

February 17th, CGOA exam day. As for all exams, I had passed the mock exams with the course as well as used the exam simulators provided by Hidde van Griensven in his Github repository to gain some more confidence. As the exam simulator only provides basic questions without source code or images, I usually also did the practice exams on the CNCF Exams repository. Only if all results pointed to a good score did I book the exam. As I was really eager to push this through. Although I was already quite tired after several extra long days of preparation, I was already working on the CBA exam. The concepts of Backstage are quite nice, but... it's based on React and NodeJS. I didn't have much issues with the concepts, the YAML, the setup, but I already had a strange feeling. CGOA passed, CAPA booked. Let's see what Backstage has to offer... 4/10

February 18th, day of the CAPA exam. I was quite well prepared for the CAPA exam, and was almost done with the CBA preparations when something happened. The results of the KodeKloud mock exam were quite ok, not fantastic, but OK. Hivagr, not too good, but yet OK. I started with the CNCF exam simulator. Everything went fine in the beginning, but then the questions are sorted by category, and the customization part became quite rough for me as I am not a NodeJS or React developer. I had to take a decision: no Backstage exam on the next day. I took my time and checked some videos again, did some labs again, and then started to focus on the CNPA exam. Halfway through.

February 19th, as the CBA courses already included parts of the CNPA exam and I somehow thought it would be easier to have a break from specific products, I finished my CNPA exam preparations and booked the exam. Then I spent time trying to understand a bit better tools like yarn, the backstage CLI and how to implement plugins in Backstage. I was even close to taking a React course on Udemy. But at some point I switched over to start with the KCA preparations. By the end of the day, I told my wife that I would have to try the CBA exam, even if it might only show me my gaps.

February 20th, I started the day discussing React, MaterialUI, and Backstage with AIs, and did additional practice exams generated by them. Then I switched over to Kyverno, as the KCA exam was still outstanding. By the end of the day, I had finished the Kyverno preparations and felt "prepared" for the Backstage certification.

As usual, I stopped all activity one hour before the exam (CNPA) to clear my head. During the exam, I realized how tired I actually was. It took much longer than usual, and it wasn’t just because there were more questions. But I had a mission.

Normally, I finish the exam, then go back to flagged questions and check all answers again. This time, I was too tired, but confident I had enough points. I only reviewed the flagged questions and submitted. More than sufficient.

That day, I also worried about running out of slots for the last exams, so I booked them for February 28th to secure a time. I knew I could reschedule if needed. 6/10

February 21st, day to defeat my nemesis. Well, it's actually not really like that. I like Backstage and the possibilities it offers. It was just the development part of this exam and the lack of time to actually learn the basics of React. So I had more discussions with AIs, got some cheat sheets for commands, and then I put everything away and finished my Kyverno preparations. The CBA exam itself? Even worse than expected. I flagged one question after the other. Every time I felt insecure, I gave an answer, flagged the question and moved on. Even when I knew the concept, the questions were sometimes irritating. I tried to stay calm and do my best. Interestingly, when I went back to the first flagged question, the answer was clear to me. Same with the next one. From the 18 or so questions I had flagged, most answers seemed correct to me. Don't ask me how I did it. I guess a mixture of good preparation and educated guessing, but I passed and not just somehow, it was even a good result.

I had put the OpenTelemetry and Cilium preparations to the end of my journey, as the learning path on KodeKloud had shown that those courses have much longer preparation videos than all the other courses. So it was still a long way to go, but one exam less on the list. 70% golden!

February 22nd, besides the KCA exam, I was working on my OpenTelemetry preparations. It turned out that OpenTelemetry was much more theory than I had hoped. By the end of the day I was done with the OTCA preparations and already did some preparations for CCA, which turned out to be only half the training videos compared to what was stated in the learning path overview. I was almost done! Unfortunately I couldn't get a good time slot for the 23rd to do the OTCA exam. Only two more to go.

February 23rd, as mentioned earlier, I used to do several mock exams prior to booking the exam. Well… on the 25th of February my wife and I had our anniversary. Our 10th wedding day. I didn't really want to spend time thinking about exams on that day. So I took a decision. I was quite confident that I would be able to finish my exam preparations for the CCA. So I rescheduled the exams. OTCA was scheduled for 3:30 pm, which basically means that you can check in at 3 pm and if you're a bit lucky can start around 3:15 pm. Further I tried to get a slot for the CCA exam the same day. I frequently checked the schedule, but by the end of the day I could only find one for 8:30 pm, which is not my preferred time to take an exam, but I was happy with the decision. Indeed I managed to get through the rest of the CCA preparations that day, so I was close to the finish line.

February 24th, I started my day going through some OpenTelemetry topics, refreshing my memory. I mean hey, I basically had four different exams on my mind in between and I really wanted to avoid messing up this exam, as it would also have a psychological effect for the CCA later on. My wife was reading the news. It was the fourth anniversary of Russia’s full-scale attack on Ukraine, which had started on February 24th, 2022. Back then we stood in front of our door watching rockets and trying to realize what was actually going on. I, the one who is usually reading the news, stayed out of it. Not today! No bad juju, no bad karma, no bad vibes. I tried to do as much as needed and as little as possible on that day. At 4:36 pm I received my results… only one exam left. Time for a break. Time to check again my personal status. Time for the exam. At 9:35 pm it was official, I had passed the last of the 10 exams.

With an average score of 92, 13 days after the first exam, I was done. 15 days in total. Most of them quite too long. I was in the mood to celebrate the achievement, while my body was in the mood to sleep. After my mind won the rest of the day, it was time for my body to win. So I went to bed.

What made this really interesting is that you can learn about a lot of different technologies and how things could actually work. As of now I have never worked in a project which really followed the GitOps approach all the way to production. The way to the Golden Kubestronaut is not only a way to deepen your knowledge in certain areas, but it can also take your mind on a journey to realize how IT can look in 2026. Even though it was really challenging, I would most definitely do it again and I am already looking forward to the CNPE exam!

Being 43 years old now, I can say that you're never too old to take on a challenge. Maybe age even helps sometimes.
All you need is a strong will, persistence, and curiosity… and yes, being a bit of a smarty helps too. ;)