Learning Objectives
Understand Cloudification strategies and the 5R migration framework for containerized applications
Master Helm, Kustomize, Helmsman, and Helmfile for enterprise packaging and deployment
Implement GitOps continuous delivery with ArgoCD, Flux, and Fleet
Deploy full observability stacks: Prometheus/Grafana monitoring and PLG/EFK logging pipelines
Configure Ingress controllers, cert-manager, Let's Encrypt, and Cloudflare for secure traffic management
Operate service mesh with Istio/Envoy, CRDs & Operators, and multi-cluster architectures
Cloudification & Containerization
Cloud migration strategies, microservices patterns, and the path to Kubernetes
Cloud Migration & the 5R Framework
Gartner 5R strategies: Rehost, Refactor, Revise, Rebuild, Replace — technical and non-technical migration factors, component decoupling
SOA, Microservices & Twelve-Factor
SOA vs microservices architectures, the Twelve-Factor App methodology, Dockerization steps and Kubernetization patterns
etcd & Troubleshooting
etcd deep dive and systematic Kubernetes troubleshooting
etcd Architecture & Operations
Distributed key-value store, Raft consensus protocol, leader elections, failure tolerance, quorum, cross-DC deployment, benchmarking
etcd Backup, Restore & Maintenance
etcdctl snapshots, member replacement procedures, compaction, disk/storage latency considerations
K8s Troubleshooting Methodology
Systematic troubleshooting: DB, control plane, workers, services (CRDs, Operators), application, and networking layers
⚡ Lab: RKE Install, etcd & Node TroubleshootingPackaging & Deployment Tools
Helm, Kustomize, Helmsman, and Helmfile for enterprise workflows
Helm Charts, Repositories & Releases
Chart structure (Chart.yaml, values.yaml, templates), Helm repositories, releases lifecycle, Helm
⚡ Lab: Helm Chart DeploymentKustomize & Overlay Mechanism
Kubernetes-native configuration management, patch-don't-fork philosophy, overlay strategy vs Helm templating
Helmsman & Helmfile
Helmsman: Charts as Code, declarative desired-state, hooks & ordering. Helmfile: declarative spec, modular infrastructure, version-controlled chart deployments
CI/CD & GitOps
Continuous delivery with ArgoCD, Flux, and Fleet at scale
ArgoCD
Declarative GitOps CD for Kubernetes, automated drift detection, multi-cluster deployment, RBAC, SSO integration, PreSync/Sync/PostSync hooks, blue/green & canary rollouts
Flux
Continuous and progressive delivery, open and extensible toolkit, source controllers, Helm and Kustomize reconciliation
Fleet — GitOps at Scale
Manage up to a million clusters, deploy from raw YAML, Helm charts, or Kustomize, lightweight single-cluster to massive multi-cluster
Ingress & TLS Certificate Management
Layer 7 routing, automated TLS with cert-manager, and Cloudflare integration
Ingress Controllers
L7 HTTP/S routing, SSL termination, host & path-based routing. NGINX Ingress: DaemonSet vs Deployment, NodePort vs LoadBalancer exposure options. Traefik overview
⚡ Lab: Ingress & Cert ManagerLet's Encrypt & Cert Manager
ACME protocol, Certbot, cert-manager CRDs (ClusterIssuers, Issuers, Certificates), HTTP01/DNS01 challenges, wildcard certificates, Ingress TLS annotations
Cloudflare
DNS service, reverse proxy, CDN, WAF, DDoS protection, SSL offloading, traffic analytics, integration with cert-manager DNS01 challenge
Container Registry
Enterprise image management with Harbor and Quay
Registry Concepts & Lifecycle
Image layers as blobs, manifests, repositories, pull/push/delete/list operations, public vs private registries, image lifecycle management
Harbor & Quay
Harbor: RBAC, vulnerability scanning, image signing, installation options (VM, K8s app, external DB). Project Quay: Red Hat's container registry, enterprise features
CoreDNS & Advanced Scheduling
Cluster DNS configuration and fine-grained pod placement
CoreDNS Deep Dive
Corefile configuration, plugins architecture, external plugins, stub domains, ExternalDNS for hybrid/multi-environment service discovery, cache tuning
Advanced Scheduling
kube-scheduler filtering & scoring, nodeSelector, NodeAffinity, Taints & Tolerations, Pod Priority & Preemption, node-pressure eviction, bin packing, scheduling framework plugins
Monitoring & Logging
Full observability with Prometheus, Grafana, and modern logging pipelines
Prometheus, AlertManager & Grafana
Prometheus exporter pods, Time Series DB, PromQL, targets & scraping, AlertManager routing (email, PagerDuty, OpsGenie), Grafana dashboards & plugins
⚡ Lab: Prometheus & Grafana StackLogging: Operator, PLG & EFK
Logging Operator with Fluent Bit + Fluentd pipeline, CRDs (logging, output, flow, clusteroutput, clusterflow). PLG stack (Promtail/Loki/Grafana) vs EFK (Elasticsearch/Fluentd/Kibana)
Storage & Networking
Distributed block storage with Longhorn and CNI deep dive with Flannel & Calico
Block Storage with Longhorn
Cloud-native distributed block storage, microservice-based architecture, replicated volumes, snapshots, S3 backup, cross-AZ scheduling, RWX, data locality, GUI dashboard
⚡ Lab: Longhorn & Network PoliciesNetworking: Flannel, Calico & Canal
Flannel layer 3 fabric, Calico with eBPF data plane, NetworkPolicy (actions, selectors, protocols, CIDR), Canal = Flannel + Calico, pod-to-pod communication
Service Mesh
Service-to-service communication with Envoy and Istio
Service Mesh Concepts & Envoy
Service mesh as infrastructure layer, TCP/IP analogy, functionalities (discovery, routing, circuit breaking, mTLS, A/B testing), benefits vs limits, Envoy proxy architecture
Istio
Programmable application-aware network, sidecar injection, traffic management, canary deployments, Istio ecosystem, comparison with/without service mesh
CRDs, Operators & Backup
Kubernetes extensibility and disaster recovery with Velero
Custom Resources & Operators
CRD definition & scoping, RESTful API endpoints, Operator pattern (reconcile loop, lifecycle management), operator maturity levels, OperatorHub, Strimzi Kafka Operator example
⚡ Lab: CRD & Velero BackupBackup & Restore with Velero
Velero architecture (server + CLI), backup & restore K8s objects via Discovery API, persistent volume snapshots, Restic file-system backups, plugins, S3 storage, cluster migration
MetalLB & Multi-Cloud
Bare-metal load balancing and multi-cluster management strategies
MetalLB Load Balancer
LoadBalancer for bare-metal clusters, address allocation from IP pools, Layer 2 (ARP/NDP) and BGP external announcement modes, integration with Ingress controllers
Multi-Cloud & Multi-Cluster Management
Multi-cloud strategies (hybrid, multi-provider), Cloud Broker role (aggregation, integration, customization), multi-K8s cluster management, API aggregation, Rancher & Fleet
Target Certifications
CKA
Certified Kubernetes Administrator — validates your skills in managing and operating production K8s clusters
CKAD
Certified Kubernetes Application Developer — validates your ability to design, build, and deploy cloud native apps
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