Cloud Native Course

Lesson 1 • Cloud Service Models and Deployment Patterns

Differentiates IaaS, PaaS, SaaS, and serverless models and their trade-offs. Guides students in selecting the right model for a given workload.

Lesson 2 • Cloud Native Maturity and Adoption Roadmap

Assesses organisational readiness using maturity models and defines a phased adoption path. Prepares students to plan realistic transformation initiatives.

Lesson 3 • The Twelve-Factor App Methodology

Applies the twelve-factor principles to design portable, scalable, and maintainable cloud native applications. Serves as a practical checklist for application design decisions.

Lesson 4 • Core Pillars of Cloud Native Architecture

Examines microservices, containers, dynamic orchestration, and DevOps culture as interdependent pillars. Provides the conceptual framework for all subsequent technical chapters.

Lesson 1 • Running and Networking Containers Locally

Demonstrates container lifecycle commands, volume mounts, and bridge networking for local development. Builds hands-on fluency before moving to orchestration.

Lesson 2 • Container Security Fundamentals

Identifies common container vulnerabilities and applies runtime security controls. Establishes security habits that carry forward into Kubernetes deployments.

Lesson 3 • Writing Effective Dockerfiles

Teaches Dockerfile syntax, layer caching, and multi-stage builds for lean images. Directly enables students to produce secure, minimal container images.

Lesson 4 • Container Concepts and Runtime Architecture

Explains Linux namespaces, cgroups, and the OCI runtime specification underpinning containers. Grounds students in how containers achieve isolation and portability.

Lesson 1 • Services, Ingress, and DNS

Explains ClusterIP, NodePort, LoadBalancer services, and Ingress controllers for traffic routing. Connects networking primitives to real application exposure patterns.

Lesson 2 • Kubernetes Architecture Deep Dive

Maps control-plane and worker-node components and explains how they interact. Provides the mental model needed to troubleshoot and operate clusters effectively.

Lesson 3 • Cluster Operations and Troubleshooting

Applies kubectl commands, log inspection, and event analysis to diagnose cluster issues. Builds operational confidence for managing production Kubernetes environments.

Lesson 4 • Core Workload Objects

Covers Pods, ReplicaSets, Deployments, StatefulSets, and DaemonSets with practical YAML examples. Enables students to choose the right object for each workload type.

Lesson 5 • Configuration and Secrets Management

Uses ConfigMaps and Secrets to decouple configuration from container images. Reinforces twelve-factor principles introduced in Chapter 1.

Lesson 1 • Container Network Interface and CNI Plugins

Explains the CNI specification and compares popular plugins for pod networking. Provides the foundation for understanding how pods communicate across nodes.

Lesson 2 • Securing Service-to-Service Communication

Enforces mutual TLS, authorisation policies, and peer authentication across services. Completes a zero-trust networking posture for cloud native workloads.

Lesson 3 • Service Mesh Architecture and Use Cases

Introduces the sidecar proxy model and explains why a service mesh solves observability and security gaps. Sets context for hands-on mesh configuration in later sections.

Lesson 4 • Configuring Traffic Management in a Mesh

Applies virtual services, destination rules, and retries to control traffic flow. Enables advanced deployment strategies such as canary and blue-green releases.

Lesson 1 • Dynamic Provisioning and CSI Drivers

Implements dynamic volume provisioning using CSI drivers for cloud and on-premises backends. Reduces manual storage operations and enables self-service for developers.

Lesson 2 • Kubernetes Storage Primitives

Explains PersistentVolumes, PersistentVolumeClaims, and StorageClasses as the storage abstraction layer. Connects storage concepts to workload requirements established in Chapter 3.

Lesson 3 • Data Protection and Disaster Recovery

Implements volume snapshots, backup tools, and cross-cluster restore procedures. Ensures business continuity for stateful cloud native applications.

Lesson 4 • Storage Performance and Optimisation

Tunes storage I/O, selects appropriate volume types, and monitors storage metrics. Prevents performance bottlenecks in data-intensive cloud native workloads.

Lesson 1 • Automated Testing Strategies

Integrates unit, integration, and contract tests into pipeline stages to enforce quality. Prevents regressions from reaching production in fast-moving cloud native teams.

Lesson 2 • Progressive Delivery and Release Strategies

Implements canary, blue-green, and feature-flag releases to reduce deployment risk. Builds on traffic management concepts introduced in Chapter 4.

Lesson 3 • GitOps and Declarative Deployments

Applies GitOps principles using Git as the single source of truth for cluster state. Enables auditable, self-healing deployments aligned with Kubernetes declarative model.

Lesson 4 • CI/CD Principles and Pipeline Design

Defines continuous integration, delivery, and deployment and maps pipeline stages to cloud native workflows. Establishes the design vocabulary used throughout the chapter.

Lesson 1 • Building Dashboards and Runbooks

Creates operational dashboards and links them to runbooks for consistent incident response. Translates raw telemetry into actionable operational intelligence.

Lesson 2 • Metrics Collection and Alerting

Deploys a metrics pipeline, defines recording rules, and configures actionable alerts. Enables proactive incident detection before users are impacted.

Lesson 3 • Centralised Log Management

Aggregates, parses, and indexes logs from containers and nodes for searchable analysis. Supports root-cause analysis across distributed microservices.

Lesson 4 • Distributed Tracing Implementation

Instruments services with trace context propagation and visualises request flows across microservices. Pinpoints latency sources invisible to metrics and logs alone.

Lesson 1 • Supply Chain Security and Image Integrity

Secures the software supply chain from source code to deployed image using signing and attestation. Mitigates risks introduced by third-party dependencies and base images.

Lesson 2 • Kubernetes RBAC and Access Control

Configures roles, role bindings, and service accounts to enforce least-privilege access. Prevents unauthorised actions within the cluster control plane and workloads.

Lesson 3 • Cloud Native Security Model

Introduces the 4C security model: cloud, cluster, container, and code layers. Provides the framework for systematically addressing security across the entire stack.

Lesson 4 • Compliance Automation and Policy as Code

Encodes compliance requirements as admission policies and continuously validates cluster state. Enables auditable, repeatable compliance without manual inspection.