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Kubernetes
Overview

Overview

Kubernetes is a container orchestration platform that automates deployment, scaling, and operation of containerized applications. It provides the infrastructure to run distributed systems resiliently, handling scaling, failover, and deployment patterns.

What Is Kubernetes

Kubernetes (K8s) is an open-source container orchestration system originally developed by Google and now maintained by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). It manages containerized workloads and services across clusters of machines.

Key characteristics:

  • Declarative configuration - Define desired state via YAML manifests
  • Self-healing - Automatic container restarts, replacement, and rescheduling
  • Horizontal scaling - Scale applications up/down based on demand
  • Service discovery - Built-in DNS and load balancing
  • Rolling updates - Zero-downtime deployments with rollback capability

What You’ll Learn

Through our Kubernetes tutorials, you’ll master:

Fundamentals

  • Pods: Smallest deployable units, multi-container pods
  • Deployments: Declarative application management, replica sets
  • Services: Stable networking endpoints (ClusterIP, NodePort, LoadBalancer)
  • ConfigMaps and Secrets: Configuration and sensitive data management
  • Namespaces: Resource isolation and multi-tenancy

Production Patterns

  • StatefulSets: Stateful applications with stable identities
  • DaemonSets: One pod per node for system services
  • Jobs and CronJobs: Batch processing and scheduled tasks
  • Ingress: HTTP/HTTPS routing and load balancing
  • Persistent Volumes: Durable storage for stateful workloads

Advanced Features

  • Custom Resource Definitions (CRDs): Extending Kubernetes API
  • Operators: Automated application management patterns
  • Network policies: Pod-to-pod communication control
  • Resource quotas and limits: Multi-tenant resource management
  • RBAC: Role-based access control for security

Administration

  • Cluster setup: kubeadm, managed Kubernetes (EKS, GKE, AKS)
  • Kubectl: Command-line tool mastery
  • Helm: Package manager for Kubernetes applications
  • Monitoring: Prometheus, Grafana integration
  • Troubleshooting: Debugging pods, inspecting events, logs

Learning Paths

By-Example Tutorial (Code-First)

Learn Kubernetes through 85 annotated examples covering 95% of the platform - ideal for DevOps engineers and platform engineers who prefer learning through working code rather than narrative explanations.

What you’ll get:

  • Self-contained, copy-paste-runnable manifests
  • Heavy annotations showing kubectl outputs and cluster behaviors
  • Progressive complexity: Beginner (30 examples) → Intermediate (30 examples) → Advanced (25 examples)
  • Production-ready patterns and best practices
  • Mermaid diagrams for complex architectures

Prerequisites and Getting Started

Prerequisites

  • Docker fundamentals (containers, images, registries)
  • Basic networking concepts (DNS, load balancing)
  • YAML syntax familiarity
  • Command-line comfort
  • Understanding of distributed systems concepts

No prior Kubernetes experience required - our tutorials build from Docker basics to advanced orchestration.

Quick Start

Get Kubernetes running locally:

# Install kubectl
curl -LO "https://dl.k8s.io/release/$(curl -L -s https://dl.k8s.io/release/stable.txt)/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl"
sudo install -o root -g root -m 0755 kubectl /usr/local/bin/kubectl

# Install minikube (local Kubernetes cluster)
curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/minikube/releases/latest/minikube-linux-amd64
sudo install minikube-linux-amd64 /usr/local/bin/minikube

# Start cluster
minikube start

# Verify cluster
kubectl cluster-info
kubectl get nodes

# Run first pod
kubectl run nginx --image=nginx:latest
kubectl get pods

Now you’re ready to follow along with our by-example tutorials.

Why Kubernetes

When to Choose Kubernetes

Kubernetes excels in scenarios requiring:

  • Microservices architecture - Manage hundreds of independent services
  • Cloud-native applications - Portable across cloud providers
  • High availability - Automated failover and self-healing
  • Auto-scaling - Dynamic scaling based on metrics
  • Complex deployments - Canary, blue/green, A/B testing
  • Multi-tenancy - Resource isolation for different teams/projects

Kubernetes vs Other Tools

  • vs Docker Swarm - Kubernetes is more feature-rich; Swarm is simpler
  • vs Nomad - Kubernetes is container-focused; Nomad supports VMs and binaries
  • vs AWS ECS - Kubernetes is cloud-agnostic; ECS is AWS-specific
  • vs Mesos - Kubernetes is container-native; Mesos is general-purpose orchestrator

Next Steps

Start your Kubernetes journey:

  1. Initial Setup - Install kubectl, minikube, and cluster
  2. Quick Start - First deployment and common patterns
  3. Kubernetes By-Example Overview - Understand the by-example approach
  4. Beginner Examples - Master fundamentals (Examples 1-30)
  5. Intermediate Examples - Production patterns (Examples 31-60)
  6. Advanced Examples - Expert mastery (Examples 61-85)

Community and Resources

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Initial Setup