Kubernetes for Beginners: Learn Fundamentals + Hands-On Labs

Develop a big-picture understanding of Kubernetes, covering masters and nodes, the atomic pod, services for reliable networking with stable IP addresses, and deployments for managing apps.

Learn Kubernetes declarative model and the concept of desired state using manifest files. The control plane executes reconciliation loops to align the actual cluster state with the desired state.

Discover how pods are the atomic unit in Kubernetes, hosting one or more containers with shared IPs and volumes, including side containers, and how deployments manage replicas.

Learn how Kubernetes services provide a stable IP and DNS for backend pods, enabling load balancing and reliable updates, using labels to connect services to the correct pods.

Explore how Kubernetes orchestrates containerized apps via a master control plane and worker nodes, using the API server, etcd cluster store, pods, services, and load balancing for scalable deployments.

Take a hands-on module to spin up a cluster, starting with a simple local development environment on your laptop and progressing to Google Cloud, AWS, and on-prem manual installs.

Spin up a production-grade Kubernetes cluster on Google Cloud using Kubernetes Engine, configure a three-node cluster, and access it via kubectl and the dashboard.

Manually install a three-node Kubernetes cluster by installing Docker, kubeadm, kubectl, and CNI, initialize the cluster, create a pod overlay network, and join worker nodes.

Deploy pods with a replication controller by defining a YAML RC with 10 replicas and a pod template, then apply and describe to verify, and scale to 20.

Demonstrate that pods are the smallest deployable unit, defined in YAML or JSON and deployed atomically, while replication controllers enforce the desired state by maintaining pod replicas.

Explore how Kubernetes service objects expose apps to the outside world, understand how they work, and implement them iteratively—then compare imperative and declarative approaches with real-world examples.

Create your first Kubernetes deployment from a YAML file with kubectl, adopting a declarative, 10-replica rolling update. Keep the existing service exposing port 30001 and review replica sets and deployments.

Move from imperative to declarative Kubernetes workflows, learn YAML and JSON, and explore high-availability control planes, continuous deployment, and networking with load balancers and ingress options.