Kubernetes in Practice

Module 1: Kubernetes Fundamentals & Cluster Setup

⏳ 1 week

• Topics: Kubernetes architecture, control plane vs. worker nodes, kubectl basics

• Hands-on: Provision a local cluster with Minikube/Kind and deploy a “Hello World” Pod

Module 2: Managing Pods & Deployments

⏳ 1 week

• Topics: Pod lifecycle, ReplicaSets, Deployment strategies (Recreate vs. RollingUpdate)

• Hands-on: Create Deployments, perform rolling updates, and roll back to previous versions

Module 3: Services & Networking

⏳ 1 week

• Topics: ClusterIP, NodePort, LoadBalancer Services, Ingress resources

• Hands-on: Expose applications via Services and configure an NGINX Ingress controller

Module 4: Configuration & Secrets Management

⏳ 1 week

• Topics: ConfigMaps for config injection, Secrets for sensitive data, environment vs. volume mounts

• Hands-on: Store database credentials in Secrets and inject them into application Pods

Module 5: Stateful Workloads & Storage

⏳ 1 week

• Topics: PersistentVolumes, PersistentVolumeClaims, StorageClasses, StatefulSets

• Hands-on: Deploy a stateful application (e.g., MySQL) using StatefulSets and dynamic provisioning

Module 6: Scaling & Auto-Scaling

⏳ 1 week

• Topics: Manual vs. automatic scaling, Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA), Cluster Autoscaler basics

• Hands-on: Load-test a service and configure HPA to adjust replica count automatically

Module 7: Security & Access Control

⏳ 1 week

• Topics: RBAC roles and bindings, ServiceAccounts, NetworkPolicies, PodSecurityPolicies

• Hands-on: Lock down a namespace with restrictive RBAC rules and network segmentation

Module 8: Observability & Troubleshooting

⏳ 1 week

• Topics: Logging with kubectl logs, metrics with Prometheus, dashboards with Grafana, kubectl debug

• Hands-on: Set up a Prometheus/Grafana stack and troubleshoot a failing Pod with logging and metrics

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