Elton Stoneman - Learn Kubernetes in a Month of Lunches

Elton Stoneman

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ISBN: 9781617297984

This is the second book to come out of my barn in Gloucestershire, England. Last time, I dedicated it to my wife, Nikki, and our children, Jackson and Eris. Theyre still fantastic, but this time I want to say thank you to some friends, tooAndrew Price, who showed me that IT professionals can be entertainers, and Mark Smith, who helped me to stop overthinking.

As I was finishing Learn Docker in a Month of Lunches, I knew that the sequel had to be about Kubernetes. For most people, that will be the next stage in their container journey, but learning Kubernetes is not easy. Thats partly because its such a powerful platform, with a huge feature set that is always evolving. But its also because it needs a reliable guide that teaches at the right level-going deep enough on the technical knowledge but keeping the focus on what the platform can do for you and your applications. I hope Learn Kubernetes in a Month of Lunches will be that guide.

Kubernetes is a system that runs and manages applications in containers. Its the most popular way to run containers in production, because its supported by all the major cloud platforms and runs equally well in the data center. Its a world-class platform used by companies like Netflix and Appleand you can run it on your laptop. You have to make an investment to learn Kubernetes, but the payback is a skill you can take to any project in any organization, confident that youll hit the ground running.

The investment you need to make is time. It takes time to become familiar with everything that Kubernetes can do and how you express your applications in the Kubernetes modeling language. You bring the time, and Learn Kubernetes in a Month of Lunches will provide the rest. There are hands-on exercises and labs that will get you experienced in all the platform features and also in the working practices and the ecosystem of tools around Kubernetes. This is a practical book that gets you ready to use Kubernetes for real.

This is my second book for Manning, and its been just as much a pleasure to write as the first. A lot of people have worked hard to get this book out and to help me make it better. Id like to thank the publishing team for all their feedback.

To all the reviewers, Alex Davies-Moore, Anthony Staunton, Brent Honadel, Clark Dorman, Clifford Thurber, Daniel Carl, David Lloyd, Furqan Shaikh, George Onofrei, Iain Campbell, Marc-Anthony Taylor, Marcus Brown, Martin Tidman, Mike Lewis, Nicolantonio Vignola, Ondrej Krajicek, Rui Liu, Sadhana Ganapathiraju, Sai Prasad Vaddepally, Sander Stad, Tobias Getrost, Tony Sweets, Trent Whiteley, Vadim Turkov, and Yogesh Shetty, your suggestions helped make this a better book.

Id also like to thank everyone in the review cycles and the early-access program who tried all the exercises and let me know when things didnt work. Thank you all for your time.

I want you to get an authentic Kubernetes experience from this book. When youve read all the chapters and completed the exercises, you should be confident that the skills youve learned are how people really use Kubernetes. This book contains a lot of content, and youll find a typical lunch hour wont be enough for many of the chapters. Thats because I want to give every topic the coverage it deserves, so you really get a complete understanding and finish the book feeling like a seasoned Kubernetes professional.

You dont need any understanding of Kubernetes to start your journey with this book, but you should be familiar with core concepts like containers and images. If youre new to the whole container space, youll find some chapters of my other book, Learn Docker in a Month of Lunches (Manning, 2020), as appendices in the ebook version of this bookthey will help to set the scene.

Kubernetes experience will help you further your career whether youre in engineering or operations, and this book doesnt make any assumptions about your background. Kubernetes is an advanced topic that builds on several other concepts, but I give an overview of those topics when we get to them. This is very much a practical book, and to get the most out of it, you should plan to work through the hands-on exercises. You dont need any special hardware: a Mac or Windows laptop, or a Linux desktop, will be fine.

GitHub is the source of truth for all the samples I use in the book. Youll download the materials when you set up your lab in chapter 1, and you should be sure to star the repository and watch for notifications.

This book follows the Month of Lunches principles: you should be able to work through each chapter in your lunchbreak and work through the whole book within a month. Work is the key here, because you should look at putting aside time to read the chapter, work through the try-it-now exercises, and have a go at the hands-on lab at the end. You should expect to have a few extended lunchbreaks because the chapters dont cut any corners or skip over key details. You need a lot of muscle memory to work effectively with Kubernetes, and practicing every day will really cement the knowledge you gain in each chapter.