CKA: ✅ - Just few word regarding exam vs. LF courses

That is pretty much how I feel as I bought the Cloud Engineer Boot Camp to help me break into the field and hopefully find employment.

I have found the course great for building theoretical knowledge but lacking in sufficient amount of practice and since the exams are practical performance based exams it would be nice to have more labs.

We have had post like this before and from other students that are worried about the exams and usually the point comes up that the course is not about teaching the exam and that there is a firewall between between departments but I think this never really dealt with the real issue, a lack of practice materials reflecting real world scenarios.

I think Greg makes a very good point and his suggestion of an advanced training lab is something I have been wishing for too. Usually boot camps are about producing graduates with the required knowledge and skills to enable them to find employment. I do feel that we should have a lot more realistic practical labs. For example, we could download a vm that we don't have the root password for (something I know from experience that does happen), we then reset the password and in docs folder we can find a list of tasks and checks that we have to perform (the more the merrier:)).

A point I would like to add is that I feel that the marketing of the boot camp is misleading as it doesn't mention anything about the prerequisites. There is no mention on the webpage that it is advisable that you take the courses that are available for free on edX before starting, especially since the boot camp builds on the knowledge previously gained from these courses and states that you should complete them (if you hadn't already) before continuing.
This shouldn't really be a problem but since the one year clock starts once you have purchased the course and you are spending a lot of (unexpected) time studying these free courses.... Unfortunately I didn't realise this until after the refund period had passed, I had also paid the full price for the course as I didn't know about the LF sales but that's on me I guess....

Since the webpage does state:

This program will prepare an absolute beginner to learn the most in-demand cloud computing skills in as little as 6 months. Start your new career today.

I think it would be nice to at least mention the courses on edX as prerequisite and/or to include them in the sample study plan, as this would represent a more realist path for the absolute beginner such as myself.

The marketing of the LFCS/K8's courses by bundling them with the exams is confusing as (intentional or not) it pretty much screams 'buy this course to pass this exam'.

The course materials in general are very good but the marketing I feel, is misleading and needs to be remedied sooner rather than later.