Kubernetes Fundamentals for Modern Applications

Module 1: Cluster fundamentals and the API model

• Control plane vs nodes and how the API server coordinates work
• Namespaces, labels, and selectors for organization and targeting
• Declarative manifests and reconciliation in practice
• Using kubectl effectively get, describe, apply, delete, and helpful flags

Module 2: Workloads and lifecycle

• Pods and containers images, resources, and restarts
• Deployments and ReplicaSets desired state and rollout history
• Jobs and CronJobs basics for batch and scheduled tasks
• Probes readiness vs liveness and startup for stable rollouts

Module 3: Services and networking basics

• Service types ClusterIP, NodePort, and LoadBalancer and common uses
• DNS and service discovery with CoreDNS
• Ingress controllers at a glance routing and TLS termination
• Network policies introduction to allow list thinking

Module 4: Configuration and state

• ConfigMaps and Secrets mounting and environment injection
• Storage classes, PersistentVolumes, and PersistentVolumeClaims
• StatefulSet overview stable identity and ordered updates
• Basic patterns for app configuration and migration safety

Module 5: Scaling and updates

• Horizontal Pod Autoscaler signals and safe targets
• Rolling updates, rollbacks, and surge settings
• Pod disruption budgets coordinating with maintenance
• Resource requests and limits for predictable scheduling

Module 6: Observability and policy basics

• Logs, events, and container stdout or stderr triage
• Metrics overview kube state metrics and golden signals
• Role based access control users, roles, and bindings
• Admission basics using Pod Security Admission profiles

Module 7: Packaging and reuse

• Helm charts structure, values, and upgrades
• Reusable manifest patterns for multi environment setups
• Namespacing and release naming conventions
• Brief look at GitOps principles to standardize delivery

Module 8: Troubleshooting workflow

• Systematic approach describe, logs, exec, and port forward
• Common states CrashLoopBackOff, ImagePullBackOff, Pending
• Debugging connectivity Services, Endpoints, and readiness
• Small operational checklist for day one production readiness