New Kubernetes Basics course drop
Today I released a new course: Kubernetes Basics. Kubernetes has a reputation for being hard to learn, and a lot of that comes from how it is usually taught. Most tutorials start by asking you to sign up for a cloud provider, and before long you are learning that provider’s console, its load balancers and its billing page instead of Kubernetes itself. I wanted a course that skips all of that. Everything in Kubernetes Basics runs on your own Linux machine (or a Linux virtual machine) using kind, which runs a complete Kubernetes cluster inside Docker. No cloud account, no credit card on file and no surprise bill at the end of the month.
Learn Kubernetes on your own machine, one building block at a time
You start by building a real three-node cluster with kind, and every command, manifest and example in the course runs on it. Each module introduces one building block, shows it working, and then breaks it on purpose so you learn what failure looks like and how to fix it. By the end, you put all of the pieces together in a capstone project: you build your own container image, load it into the cluster, and deploy a web app backed by a Redis database. Then you scale it, update it without downtime and roll it back.
Helm shows up near the end, after you understand the objects it creates. That order matters: when a Helm release misbehaves, you debug it with the same kubectl skills you used everywhere else in the course.
Every example was tested against kind v0.33, Kubernetes 1.37 and Helm 4, and the output you see in the lessons is real output from those runs.
What you will learn:
- Explain what Kubernetes does and how the control plane and worker nodes cooperate
- Install Docker, kind and kubectl on Linux and create single-node and multi-node clusters
- Write YAML manifests and manage objects declaratively with kubectl apply
- Run, inspect, debug and troubleshoot Pods, including multi-container Pods
- Scale applications, roll out new versions and roll back with Deployments
- Connect and expose applications with Services and cluster DNS
- Organize work with namespaces, and configure apps with ConfigMaps and Secrets
- Keep data with PersistentVolumeClaims and run stateful apps with StatefulSets
- Add health probes and resource limits, and run Jobs, CronJobs and DaemonSets
- Install, configure, upgrade and roll back applications with Helm
How the course flows
- 10 modules of short, practical lessons, with lab checklists you tick off as you go
- A quiz at the end of every module, with explanations for every answer. Score 70% to unlock the next module, and retake it as often as you like
- A capstone project that deploys a two-tier app with everything you learned
- A timed final exam to prove what you know
- A printable kubectl, kind and Helm cheat sheet (PDF) to keep
- A certificate of completion when you finish
What you need
You should be comfortable on the Linux command line and have a basic idea of what a container is. You need a Linux computer or virtual machine with at least 2 CPU cores, 8 GB of RAM and 20 GB of free disk space. That is it.
The course is $40 USD. To enroll, visit my LMS Course Enrollment Page