cloudnative wiki

Kubernetes

5 min read

Kubernetes ☸️

Current Baseline: Kubernetes 1.37 ("Garhwal", Released August 2026)

This curriculum reflects the modern Kubernetes baseline:

  • Gateway API as the primary ingress standard following the community retirement of ingress-nginx in March 2026.
  • nftables as the primary kube-proxy direction alongside IPVS deprecation.
  • EndpointSlices, cgroup v2, metrics.k8s.io GA, and DRA Extended Resources GA.

Choose Your Path

Reader IntentWhere to StartWhat You Will Get
I am new to Kubernetes00 — Start HereHands-on local cluster setup with kind and first workload deployment.
I want a structured conceptual learning pathConcepts Hub (L00–L09)10-level sequential curriculum from primitives to controller internals.
I need to fix a cluster or workload outageTroubleshooting PlaybooksSymptom-first diagnosis (CrashLoopBackOff, Pod Pending, DNS, PVC issues).
I am hardening or preparing for productionL07 — Security & Security BaselineLayered threat model, Pod Security Standards, NetworkPolicies, and admission control.
I am running on AWS (EKS)EKS Implementation TrackVPC CNI, IRSA, EKS Pod Identity, Karpenter, and EKS Auto Mode.
I want tool & delivery walkthroughsGuides IndexHelm, Kustomize, Argo CD, kubectl workflows, and k9s.

Curriculum Roadmap

flowchart TD
    L00["00 — Start Here\n(Mental Model, kind Cluster, First Workload)"] --> L01["01 — Architecture\n(Control Plane, Worker Nodes, Reconciliation)"]
    L01 --> L02["02 — Objects & API\n(Manifests, State, Labels, Downward API)"]
    L02 --> L03["03 — Workloads\n(Pods, Deployments, StatefulSets, Jobs)"]
    L03 --> L04["04 — Services & Networking\n(ClusterIP, DNS, Gateway API, CNI)"]
    L04 --> L05["05 — Config & Storage\n(ConfigMaps, Secrets, PVs, PVCs, CSI)"]
    L05 --> L06["06 — Scheduling & Scaling\n(Requests/Limits, Affinity, HPA, PDBs)"]
    L06 --> L07["07 — Security\n(RBAC, ServiceAccounts, PSS, NetworkPolicy)"]
    L07 --> L08["08 — Operations\n(Observability, Node Drains, Upgrades, Triage)"]
    L08 --> L09["09 — Advanced & Internals\n(CRDs, Operators, Finalizers, etcd, GC)"]

    subgraph DeepDives ["Practical Guides & Tracks"]
        G_Trouble["Troubleshooting Guides"]
        G_Delivery["GitOps & Helm Delivery"]
        G_EKS["EKS Implementation Track"]
    end

    L04 -.-> G_Delivery
    L07 -.-> G_EKS
    L08 -.-> G_Trouble

    style L00 fill:#e1f5fe,stroke:#0288d1,stroke-width:2px
    style L03 fill:#e8f5e9,stroke:#388e3c,stroke-width:2px
    style L04 fill:#fff3e0,stroke:#f57c00,stroke-width:2px
    style L07 fill:#fce4ec,stroke:#c2185b,stroke-width:2px
    style L09 fill:#ede7f6,stroke:#512da8,stroke-width:2px

Core Sections

1. Conceptual Curriculum (concepts/)

Sequential, provider-neutral fundamentals building a single mental model:

2. Cumulative Hands-on Labs (labs/)

A 10-part progressive lab track in a reproducible multi-node kind cluster with podinfo:

3. Revision & Master Decision Tables (review/)

High-density references for experienced practitioners, technical interviews, and exam review:

4. Practical Guides (guides/)

5. Provider Tracks & Deep Dives

More in this section

  • Containers: What a container is, images and registries, and the runtime stack beneath the kubelet.
  • Container Runtimes (CRI, containerd, runc): The engine executing container processes.
  • Linux: OS primitives powering containers (namespaces, cgroups v2, seccomp).
  • Observability: Metrics, distributed tracing, and Prometheus/Grafana architecture.
  • DevOps: Pipelines, GitOps, infrastructure as code and SRE practice.
  • Security: Zero trust, SIEM and incident response around the cluster.
  • AWS: Cloud infrastructure, IAM, and VPC networking foundation.

10 items under this folder.