# CKA prep update: 3 hours optimizing my lab, 3 minutes for my first exercise

Sat down to practice etcdctl snapshot save, one of the first "must-know" CKA skills. Instead, I spent the evening tuning my Azure sandbox lab automation first.

What I actually did:

- Fixed a permission bug in my resource-group handling
- Split node provisioning so control-plane and workers only install what they need
- Added missing kubeadm prerequisites I'd overlooked (conntrack, socat, ebtables)
- Built a setup-ssh.sh script to handle key permissions and load them into the SSH agent automatically
- Added a connect.sh script so I can SSH into either node with one command

Side effect: provisioning crept from 5:45 to 6:02, because of the extra packages. Worth it for nodes that are actually complete instead of missing half the tools you need for real troubleshooting.

And in the end: I finally got to run my first real etcd exercise.

Sometimes you learn more from a "detour" than from the main task 🤩

At least I now have an easier way to start the provisioning and a much smoother way to connect to the nodes!

My whole lab startup now looks like this:

1. git clone the repo
2. Upload SSH keys
3. source setup-ssh.sh
4. bash sandbox-up-calico.sh <resource-group>
5. bash connect.sh control

![CKA lab terminal screenshot](https://images.koorevaar.com/linkedin-import/cka-lab-provisioning-tuneup.jpg)

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*Co-authored with Claude.*

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