KUBERNETES

ROADMAP
Kubernetes User

by TechWorld with Nana

 KUBERNETES ROADMAP BY
TECHWORLD WITH NANA

TABLE OF CONTENTS
I. START HERE 3

II. ADMIN VS USER 4

III. K8S USER ROADMAP

Fundamental Concepts 7
Work with Kubernetes 9
Kubernetes User Path 12

IV. RECAP AND RESOURCES

Summary - K8s Roadmap 14
Where to Learn 15
TWN Learning Resources 16
Learning Tip 20

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 Start Here
Why Learning Kubernetes is a Good Idea
Kubernetes (K8s) is being adopted at
companies at a high pace and anyone with
knowledge in it has a career advantage.

You can even become a full-time K8s

engineer at your job.

Kubernetes job searches grew by 2125% in 4 years

Kubernetes is powerful, but complex

K8s is a powerful platform, but a very complex one.
Which means you have a steep learning curve.

So even though many people want to learn

Kubernetes, often they don’t know where to start. So
it certainly helps to have a guidance and sort of a
roadmap of how to approach learning K8s efficiently.

That’s why I want to give you this step by step roadmap of what to learn and in
which order to structure your learning of K8s.

You can also find corresponding learning resources,

where to learn from at the end.

Pre-Requisite - Containers
Kubernetes is built on containers, so before
learning Kubernetes you should be able to run
and build containers.
 Administrator vs User
Most important point to consider, when you
start learning Kubernetes

Kubernetes platform - as any other platform - has two sides or aspects:

Administration -
Usage of K8s cluster
Set Up and Maintenance of K8s cluster

Set up, initialize and configure the Deploying applications and

K8s cluster for its actual usage. services into the K8s cluster

There are even different certifications for these 2:

CKA CKAD
 Administrator vs User
Decide based on your role

So these are 2 different roles and

you need to understand, which
aspect of the technology you want
to learn?

Are you working in Operations?

You need to learn K8s Administration and Operations side

Check out the other

roadmap for K8s Admin

Are you an Application Developer?

You need to learn how to use K8s to deploy and run apps inside the cluster
and follow this roadmap
Administrator vs User
Learning both sides

Note however, there are

fundamental concepts that
apply to both...

And you can eventually learn both, but you should divide it and learn
one part first and then build the other on top!

This will make your learning process much

easier and more structured :)
 Fundamental
Concepts
First, you need to learn fundamental concepts. These are
the building blocks of Kubernetes knowledge, laying a solid
foundation for your Kubernetes journey!

Learning the "Why"

Most important entry point to learning any new technology is, learn

01 the WHY behind the technology first.

What problem does it solve, that made K8s so popular and widely
used?
The whys of how K8s helps solve issues of operating large
containerized apps

Architecture
As part of K8s architecture, you need to
learn about the control plane and

02 worker nodes.

What is the role of each?

How are they connected?
What processes are running on
them?
Etc

www.techworld-with-nana.com/kubernetes-roadmap
 Fundamental
Concepts
Core K8s Objects
You need to understand what are:

Pods
Services
ConfigMaps
Secrets

03 Ingress
Deployment
StatefulSet
Namespaces
Volumes

These are the main K8s components. Understand why each one exists
and what are their relation and connection to each other

You work with these K8s objects directly: You create Deployments,
Services etc, you join Worker Nodes to the cluster and so on.

K8s Components - How K8s works

behind the scenes
But there are components of K8s, that work behind the scenes and
doing its magic in the cluster:

04 Understanding what each

component does, will help
you understand the
mechanisms behind the
cluster, the self-healing
functionality, the way K8s
manages desired vs actual
state etc.

www.techworld-with-nana.com/kubernetes-roadmap
 Work with
Kubernetes
While understanding the concepts behind a tool is
essential, after that you should get hands-on!

This gives a different level of confidence with the tool and

breaks the fear of working with it.

Access and Interacting with K8s

Next step is to actually access and work with a Kubernetes cluster.
As part of this, you need to learn kubectl command-line interface and
its main commands, which is essential for interacting with your

05
Kubernetes cluster effectively.

KUBECTL K8s cluster

kubectl Cheat Sheet: https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/kubectl/cheatsheet/

K8s Manifest Files

These are K8s YAML configuration files, which
describe the desired state of your applications within

06
the cluster. These are used to define what K8s
components, like deployments, services etc, you want
to create in the cluster.

Learn syntax and understand how to create and

manage these manifest files, which will be crucial for
successful Kubernetes deployments.

www.techworld-with-nana.com/kubernetes-roadmap
 Work with
Kubernetes

Troubleshooting
As you progress in your K8s journey and start
deploying applications inside and creating various K8s
resources, you'll encounter challenges and issues that
require troubleshooting skills.

07 So you also need to learn kubectl commands for troubleshooting as

well as other ways of getting insights into the cluster networking,
components, applications etc:
Check container logs
Check cluster status
Check Node and Pod Status
Verify Networking
...

Common K8s misconfigurations

& Bad Practices (advanced)
K8s is not opinionated and you can do a lot in the
cluster, but this also means you can do a lot wrong, like

08
configuring things with bad practices and misconfiguring
things. That’s where details of common
misconfigurations will help a lot, knowing from the start
what are some things that people without experience in
K8s may misconfigure.
I find it easier to start with bad practices and what not to do, before
learning about best practices. Because you learn exactly what to avoid
and importantly why. This will also teach you more about how K8s
works and why are things a certain way.

www.techworld-with-nana.com/kubernetes-roadmap
 Work with
Kubernetes

Helm Charts (advanced)

Another advanced topic you can learn at this point is Helm charts,
especially as you start deploying third-party services in your cluster
next to your own apps.

09
Learn:

What is Helm
What are Helm charts
What are they used for etc.

Again first why we need them and then how to use them. This will
further enhance your deployment capabilities.

On this foundation, you can now build the knowledge you

need to administer and operate a k8s cluster.

Fundamentals K8s Usage

www.techworld-with-nana.com/kubernetes-roadmap
 User
Roadmap

Deep Dive on Deployment Components

As a K8s user, your main goal is to deploy and run your applications in
a K8s cluster with high availability.

For that you need to learn: Deep Dive on:

Concepts of replicating your app Deployments
Scaling up/down to adjust to load ReplicaSets
Configure Readiness/Liveness Probes StatefulSets

10
Achieve high availability for stateful apps as well Services
Different Volume types, which one is best for Volumes
your use case
Different Service Types

Deep Dive on K8s Manifest Files

These K8s objects are defined in K8s manifest files, so you need deeper
knowledge here as well:
Learn different configuration options for core K8s resources
How to define Init Containers
How to configure different Services for your application

Deployment Strategies
Learn how to deploy your application changes without causing your app
downtime or deploying without risking that the app changes will crash

11
the entire application in production environment.

For that you need to learn different deployment

strategies:
Canary Deployment
Blue-Green Deployment
Rolling Updates/Rollbacks

www.techworld-with-nana.com/kubernetes-roadmap
 User
Roadmap

CI/CD Integration
As part of your developer workflow, you will have a CI/CD pipeline
configured that deploys to the end environment. Instead of doing it manually.

12
Learn how to integrate CI/CD with Kubernetes to do automatic
deployment
Learn for both: Self-Managed and Managed K8s Service

Application Networking
Knowledge of configuration details, is even more important when deploying
more complex microservices applications.

Learn how to:

13 Connect them properly within the cluster

and configure all needed 3rd-party
services for your microservices
application
Like Service Mesh or Message Broker

Handle traffic to the cluster (Ingress) and

within the cluster

www.techworld-with-nana.com/kubernetes-roadmap
 Summary
Kubernetes Roadmap

1-
Getting the
prerequisites right

2-
Fundamental Concepts

3-
Work with Kubernetes
(Fundamentals)

4-
Deep Dive on Usage

www.techworld-with-nana.com/kubernetes-roadmap
 Where to learn
Official Blog Individual
Docs? Articles? Videos?

Having a roadmap like this is great for

structuring your learning, but you still need
to find the right resources that explain
these concepts properly, put them in the
right order, don't miss important topics etc

You can do that, but requires a lot of time

and effort.

So instead, as a simpler alternative, we have

created pre-structured courses, where I
already did all the heavy lifting of creating the
perfect curriculum, with the right hands-on
projects and practical examples for this
specific learning path.

So definitely check out our TWN learning

resources to make your life easier.
TWN Learning Resources

FREE - Youtube
Kubernetes Crash Course for Absolute Beginners

You will learn everything to get started with Kubernetes,

learning all the core concepts, set up K8s cluster locally
and get your first hands-on experience!

Who is this course for?

For Kubernetes beginners to learn the basics

https://www.techworld-with-nana.com
 DevOps Bootcamp
A 6-month program to kickstart your career as a DevOps
engineer. The whole bootcamp was created with the focus of
making you job-ready and able to do the DevOps tasks at work

Kubernetes is a big, but just one part of it.

You will learn:

How to USE K8s to advanced level & operational parts
Kubernetes in combination with various other DevOps
technologies
Managed Kubernetes Service: AWS EKS
Automating K8s cluster provisioning with Terraform
Deploying from Jenkins CI/CD pipeline to K8s cluster
Monitoring and Alerting in K8s
And more

Everything based on actual real-life use cases to be able to

apply it at work immediately.

https://www.techworld-with-nana.com/devops-bootcamp
 DevSecOps Bootcamp
Integrate Security in every part of the DevOps process and
advanced Kubernetes security

Security is a high priority at companies, so knowledge in this

field makes you even more valuable on the job market

Again Kubernetes Security is just one part of it.

WILL BE RELEASED IN 2023

You can sign up for the waitlist

https://www.techworld-with-nana.com/devsecops-bootcamp
TWN Learning Resources

Kubernetes Administrator Course

Everything you need to master the Certified Kubernetes
Administrator (CKA) exam in one comprehensive and
practical course!

Who is this course for?

For people:
who want to become a Kubernetes Administrator
who want to pass the CKA exam successfully
who need to set up and maintain a K8s cluster at
work

https://www.techworld-with-nana.com/kubernetes-administrator-cka
 Last Learning Tip :)
Regardless of which resources you use to learn, be sure to
follow this roadmap step by step

And for each concept:

1st:
Understand the WHY

2nd:
Immediately put it into practice

Good luck on your

Kubernetes journey!