L00 — Start Here 🚦
The Kubernetes concepts section is a top-down learning path — 10 levels, each building on the previous. Before you dive in, set the right mental model and prerequisites.
What Kubernetes actually is
Kubernetes is a portable, extensible, open-source platform for managing containerized workloads and services, that facilitates both declarative configuration and automation. (CNCF definition)
Google open-sourced the Kubernetes project in 2014. The name comes from Greek, meaning “helmsman” or “pilot”. The “K8s” abbreviation counts the 8 letters between K and s.
The mental model in one sentence: you describe the desired state, Kubernetes continuously drives the actual state to match.
That’s it. Everything in this section is the details of how that loop works, who participates, and what tools you can build on top.
What Kubernetes gives you
- Service discovery and load balancing — DNS names or IPs, traffic distributed
- Storage orchestration — auto-mount local, cloud, or network storage
- Automated rollouts and rollbacks — describe desired state, k8s rolls the change out
- Automatic bin packing — schedule containers based on CPU/memory requests
- Self-healing — restart failed containers, replace unresponsive ones, don’t advertise until ready
- Secret and configuration management — store and inject sensitive data without rebuilding images
- Batch execution — manage Jobs and CronJobs alongside services
- Horizontal scaling —
kubectl scale, or auto-scale on CPU/custom metrics - IPv4/IPv6 dual-stack — assign both address families to pods and services
- Designed for extensibility — add features via CRDs, operators, admission webhooks
What Kubernetes is NOT
- Not a PaaS. No built-in app runtime, no source build, no middleware, no opinionated CI/CD.
- Not just an orchestrator. Orchestration = “first do A, then B”. Kubernetes is a set of independent composable control processes driving state toward desired — there’s no central workflow engine.
- Not opinionated about logging, monitoring, alerting. It exposes the metrics and event stream, you bring the stack.
- Not a configuration language. The API is the contract; tools like Helm/Kustomize produce manifests for it.
Prerequisites
You should be comfortable with these before starting L01:
| Topic | Why it matters |
|---|---|
| Linux command line | You’ll be SSHing into nodes, reading logs, running kubectl constantly |
| Containers (Docker / OCI) | Pods run containers — know what an image, layer, and registry are |
| YAML syntax | Every Kubernetes manifest is YAML; you need to read and write it fluently |
| Networking basics (IP, port, DNS, TLS) | L04 is unreadable without this |
| A vague idea of what an API is | The Kubernetes API is the product; “I know what a REST API is” is enough |
Helpful but not required: distributed systems basics, an etcd primer, a programming language (Go, Python) for the L09 advanced topics.
How to read this section
The folder numbers are intentional — 00 → 09 in order. Each level:
- Tells you what you’ll understand after reading it
- Lists every note with a status (✅ Core / 🟡 Outline / ⚪ Stub)
- Suggests a reading order
- Links to the next level
If you already know k8s and want reference material, jump to the level you need. The wikilinks back to prerequisites are explicit.
The big picture
┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────┐
│ L00 Start Here ← you are here │
│ L01 Architecture │
│ L02 Objects │
│ L03 Workloads │
│ L04 Services & Networking │
│ L05 Config & Storage │
│ L06 Scheduling & Scaling │
│ L07 Security │
│ L08 Operations │
│ L09 Advanced (operators, internals) │
└─────────────────────────────────────────────────┘
↓
[EKS] [Guides] [Certifications]
The numbered subfolders are universal Kubernetes. AWS-specific notes (EKS, Karpenter, VPC CNI) live in EKS. Tooling and walkthroughs (Helm, Argo CD, ingress) live in Guides. Exam prep is in CKAD.
Where to go next
→ L01 — Architecture: learn what runs inside a cluster and where.