Kubernetes Intensive Online Workshop

Kubernetes Intensive Workshop

You've started to "containerize" your applications by writing a Dockerfile or two, and now you want to run your containers in a cluster. But Kubernetes is quite different from Docker

In this hands-on workshop, we will learn about Kubernetes and its key concepts, both in theory (we will become familiar with all the things evoked in the previous paragraph) and in practice (we will know how to use them to deploy and scale our applications).

Kubernetes has the reputation of being a complex system with a steep learning curve. We will see that it is, indeed, a complex system, but that it is possible to tame its most essential features in just a few hours.

We will also see how to perform rolling updates (deploying a new version of a component without downtime), add and remove load balancer backends in real-time with labels, achieve quasi-atomic blue/green deployments with dynamic selectors, and injecting central configuration into containers with ConfigMaps and the downward API.

Description

You've started to "containerize" your applications by writing a Dockerfile or two, and now you want to run your containers in a cluster. But Kubernetes is quite different from Docker: the smallest unit of deployment is not a container, but a pod; pods are accessed through specialized load balancers called services; there are labels and selectors everywhere; and everything is created by expressing desired state with YAML, lots of YAML.

In this hands-on workshop, we will learn about Kubernetes and its key concepts, both in theory (we will become familiar with all the things evoked in the previous paragraph) and in practice (we will know how to use them to deploy and scale our applications).

Kubernetes has the reputation of being a complex system with a steep learning curve. We will see that it is, indeed, a complex system, but that it is possible to tame its most essential features in just a few hours.

Prerequisites

The workshop will be held online in English in Zoom. Please install it on your device. Number of participants - 50.

To make the most out of this workshop, you should be comfortable with the UNIX command line (be able to SSH into a remote machine, navigate directories, edit files with `vi` or a similar editor), and have basic knowledge of containers. It's not necessary to be a Docker expert, but ideally, you'll have already built and run a container image (for instance with `docker build` and `docker run`).

If you have zero knowledge of containers, the "Docker Intensive Workshop" will teach you everything you need (and some more).

You do not need to install Kubernetes on your local machine: we will execute all the exercises on remote Kubernetes clusters, provided for the duration of the workshop.

Level of audience

This workshop is for developers, system administrators, and architects alike: anyone who needs to interact with a Kubernetes cluster, or who wants to understand practical Kubernetes concepts in order to design scalable applications.

Agenda

Kubernetes overview:

• Orchestration concepts
• The API and control plane
• Nodes, Pods, Services
• Declarative vs imperative

First contact:

• Using kubectl
• Running containers on k8s
• From Pods to Deployments

Connecting containers:

• Kubernetes network model
• The different Service types
• Exposing containers

Putting it all together:

• Running containers with Deployments
• Exposing containers with Services
• Internal and external communication