Kubernetes Course

Lesson 1 • Cluster Architecture Overview

Maps the control plane and worker node components and their responsibilities. Provides the structural foundation for every subsequent operational topic.

Lesson 2 • Kubernetes Objects and the API

Introduces the declarative object model and how the API server exposes cluster state. Students gain fluency with resource definitions before writing any manifests.

Lesson 3 • Setting Up a Local Cluster

Guides students through installing a single-node cluster for hands-on practice. Validates the environment so all subsequent labs run without setup friction.

Lesson 1 • Init and Sidecar Containers

Covers auxiliary container patterns that extend Pod behaviour without modifying the main image. Students implement logging, proxying, and initialisation patterns.

Lesson 2 • Debugging and Inspecting Pods

Applies kubectl commands and ephemeral containers to diagnose Pod failures. Equips students with a repeatable troubleshooting workflow.

Lesson 3 • Pod Health Probes

Configures liveness, readiness, and startup probes to automate health management. Directly enables reliable rolling updates covered in the next chapter.

Lesson 4 • Pod Anatomy and Lifecycle

Defines Pod structure, container relationships, and phase transitions from Pending to Terminated. Grounds students in the unit all higher-level workloads wrap.

Lesson 1 • Scheduler Concepts and Pod Placement

Explains how the scheduler selects nodes using predicates and priorities, and how to influence placement. Enables intentional workload distribution across the cluster.

Lesson 2 • Jobs and CronJobs

Runs finite and scheduled batch tasks with completion guarantees. Extends workload coverage to non-long-running processes.

Lesson 3 • Deployments and ReplicaSets

Explains how Deployments manage ReplicaSets to maintain desired Pod count and enable updates. Establishes the primary controller for stateless workloads.

Lesson 4 • DaemonSets and Node-Level Workloads

Deploys one Pod per node for infrastructure tasks such as log collection and monitoring agents. Connects to node management topics introduced in Chapter 1.

Lesson 1 • The Kubernetes Network Model

Defines the flat network model, Pod-to-Pod communication rules, and CNI plugin responsibilities. Provides the conceptual base for all Service and Ingress configuration.

Lesson 2 • Ingress Controllers and Rules

Deploys an Ingress controller and writes rules for host- and path-based HTTP routing. Consolidates external access through a single entry point.

Lesson 3 • Services: ClusterIP, NodePort, LoadBalancer

Configures the three primary Service types to expose Pods at different network scopes. Students select the correct type for each exposure requirement.

Lesson 4 • DNS and Service Discovery

Explains CoreDNS operation and the DNS naming scheme for Services and Pods. Enables applications to resolve dependencies by name rather than IP.

Lesson 1 • Persistent Volumes and Claims

Covers the PersistentVolume and PersistentVolumeClaim API and the binding workflow. Students provision durable storage independent of Pod scheduling.

Lesson 2 • ConfigMaps for Application Configuration

Creates and consumes ConfigMaps as environment variables and mounted files. Decouples runtime configuration from image builds.

Lesson 3 • Secrets Management

Stores sensitive data in Secret objects and controls access through RBAC. Highlights encoding, encryption at rest, and safe consumption patterns.

Lesson 4 • Storage Classes and Dynamic Provisioning

Configures StorageClass objects to automate volume provisioning from a backend. Removes manual PV creation from the operator workflow.

Lesson 1 • Pod Security Standards

Applies the built-in Pod Security Standards profiles to namespaces to restrict dangerous Pod configurations. Replaces deprecated PodSecurityPolicy with a supported model.

Lesson 2 • Role-Based Access Control

Creates Roles, ClusterRoles, and bindings to grant least-privilege API access. Directly controls who can create, read, or modify cluster resources.

Lesson 3 • Authentication and Authorisation Basics

Explains how Kubernetes authenticates users and service accounts before authorising requests. Establishes the identity model underlying all RBAC configuration.

Lesson 4 • Security Contexts and Capabilities

Sets container-level and Pod-level security contexts to drop privileges and enforce read-only filesystems. Reduces the blast radius of a compromised container.

Lesson 1 • Distributed Tracing Concepts

Introduces trace context propagation and span collection to diagnose latency across microservices. Complements metrics and logs for full observability coverage.

Lesson 2 • Log Collection and Aggregation

Implements a cluster-wide log pipeline using a DaemonSet-based collector forwarding to a central store. Enables log search and correlation across all workloads.

Lesson 3 • Autoscaling Based on Metrics

Configures Horizontal Pod Autoscaler and Vertical Pod Autoscaler using collected metrics. Closes the loop between observability data and automated cluster response.

Lesson 4 • Cluster and Workload Monitoring

Deploys a Prometheus stack to scrape cluster and application metrics and visualise them in Grafana. Produces actionable dashboards for cluster operators.

Lesson 1 • Cluster Upgrades and Maintenance

Executes node draining, cordon, and control plane upgrades with zero-downtime procedures. Ensures students can maintain cluster currency without service disruption.

Lesson 2 • Resource Optimisation and Cost Control

Analyses resource requests, limits, and idle capacity to reduce infrastructure spend. Applies rightsizing and cluster autoscaler configuration for efficiency.

Lesson 3 • Multi-Tenancy and Namespace Isolation

Partitions a cluster into isolated namespaces with quotas, limits, and RBAC boundaries. Enables safe sharing of a single cluster across multiple teams.

Lesson 4 • Backup and Disaster Recovery

Backs up etcd and application state and validates restore procedures. Prepares students to recover a cluster from data loss or corruption.