Kubernetes For Beginners 2025

Learn Core Kubernetes Concepts and Kickstart Your DevOps Career

What you'll learn

Learners will gain a solid understanding of the fundamental principles of Kubernetes orchestration, laying a strong foundation for advanced learning.

By the end of the course, learners will have the confidence and foundational skills necessary to pursue a career in Kubernetes and cloud-native technologies.

Learners will be able to effectively deploy, manage, and scale applications within a Kubernetes environment.

This course will provide a foundational understanding that supports further preparation for the CKA and CKAD exams

Requirements

You must have working knowledge of Linux operating system.

You will need a computer with at least 8CPU cores and minimum 8GiB memory (16GiB recommended)

Description

Kubernetes for Beginners is a comprehensive introductory course designed specifically for those new to Kubernetes and container orchestration. Whether you're a developer, system administrator, or IT enthusiast, this course will equip you with the essential knowledge and practical skills needed to understand and work with Kubernetes confidently.The course begins with a clear explanation of Kubernetes fundamentals, including its architecture, core components, and how it manages containerized applications. Theoretical concepts are paired with  hands-on exercises to reinforce learning and bridge the gap between theory and practice.Through a series of guided labs and demonstrations, learners will deploy applications, manage Kubernetes resources, scale workloads, and gain experience using key tools like kubectl and YAML configuration files. The practical focus ensures that students not only understand the "what" and "why" behind Kubernetes but also develop the skills to apply their knowledge in real scenarios.In addition to providing a solid technical foundation, this course also serves as an excellent starting point for those planning to pursue Kubernetes certifications such as the Certified Kubernetes Administrator (CKA) and Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD). While the course does not cover every exam topic in detail, it lays the groundwork necessary for more advanced study and certification preparation.By the end of the course, learners will have the confidence and competence to explore further into Kubernetes and cloud-native technologies, setting the stage for career growth in DevOps, and cloud infrastructure roles.For any questions and doubts ,please feel to ask question through Q & A section in the course.  Also review the course as per your experience and please share your valuable feedback — all perspectives are welcome !Course is based on Kubernetes version 1.31.x and later it is upgraded to latest available Kubernetes version 1.33.x !

Overview

Section 1: Getting Started: An Introduction to Course

Lecture 1 Course Objectives & Focus Areas

Lecture 2 Setting Up Kubernetes Test Environments: Multiple Approaches

Lecture 3 Getting Started with Lab Setup : Information

Lecture 4 Getting Started with Lab Setup : LAB Architecture

Lecture 5 Getting Started with Lab Setup : Downloading and Importing VMs

Lecture 6 Download course material & Clone the GitHub repo

Section 2: Introducing Containers: What They Are and How They Work

Lecture 7 Introduction

Lecture 8 Virtualization vs Containerization: Key Concepts Explained

Lecture 9 Introducing Containers and Container’s image

Lecture 10 Building Container's Image

Lecture 11 Understanding Concept of Namespaces

Lecture 12 Running a Web Container

Lecture 13 Why Kubernetes? Understanding the Benefits of Container Orchestration

Section 3: Kubernetes Fundamentals

Lecture 14 Introduction

Lecture 15 Introducing Kubernetes Architecture

Lecture 16 Introducing Kubernetes API & API Groups

Lecture 17 Getting to Know Kubernetes Objects: An Essential Overview

Lecture 18 An Overview of Object Types

Lecture 19 Introducing mTLS in Kubernetes

Lecture 20 Authenticating to Kubernetes Cluster using kubeconfig file

Lecture 21 Using kubeconfig file to Authenticate to kube-apiserver

Lecture 22 Different ways to make REST API calls to Kubernetes API

Lecture 23 Understanding Pod Manifests: The Blueprint of Kubernetes Pods

Lecture 24 Introducing Labels and Selectors

Section 4: Kubernetes Control and Worker Node Components

Lecture 25 Introduction

Lecture 26 Core control place components as Static Pods

Lecture 27 Kubernetes API Server (kube-apiserver)

Lecture 28 Kubernetes Scheduler (kube-scheduler)

Lecture 29 Kubernetes Controller Manager(kube-controller-manager)

Lecture 30 Kubernetes etcd Database

Lecture 31 Introducing kubelet Part1

Lecture 32 Introducing Kubelet Part2

Lecture 33 Introducing kube-proxy Part1

Lecture 34 Introducing kube-proxy Part2

Lecture 35 Container Runtime -containerd

Section 5: Deploying Workload on Kubernetes Cluster

Lecture 36 Introduction

Lecture 37 Getting Started with kubectl help

Lecture 38 Using Imperative vs Declarative Approach for Kubernetes Object Management-Part1

Lecture 39 Using Imperative vs Declarative Approach for Kubernetes Object Management-Part2

Lecture 40 Understanding 'kubectl apply' command options

Lecture 41 Understaning 'kubectl create' command options

Lecture 42 Understanding 'kubectl run' command options

Lecture 43 Important Container Images for this course

Lecture 44 Executing command inside Container and attaching to Container

Lecture 45 Understanding of NGINX web server

Lecture 46 Introducing ConfigMaps and Secrets in Kubernetes

Lecture 47 Introducing volume types in Kubernetes

Lecture 48 Demo configMap voulme

Lecture 49 Demo secret volume

Lecture 50 Demo emptyDir volume

Lecture 51 Demo hostPath volume

Lecture 52 ServiceAccount: Identity and Permissions for Pods

Lecture 53 Pod authentication with kube-apiserver

Lecture 54 Understanding Pods: The Core of Container Orchestration :Part1

Lecture 55 Understanding Pods: The Core of Container Orchestration :Part2

Lecture 56 Displaying Kubernetes Objects using different Output Formats

Lecture 57 Understanding ReplicaSet: Managing Replicas

Lecture 58 Understanding Deployments: Managing Updates and Rollouts

Lecture 59 Understanding Services: Connecting and Exposing Pods

Lecture 60 ConfigMap: Decoupling Configurations from Containerized Process

Lecture 61 Secret: Safeguarding Sensitive Data

Lecture 62 Understanding Init containers

Lecture 63 Introducing Sidecar Containers

Section 6: Understanding Networking in Kubernetes

Lecture 64 Introduction

Lecture 65 Introducing Cluster Networking

Lecture 66 Introducing CNI and Different Types of CNI Plugins

Lecture 67 Pod, Service and Node CIDR Ranges

Lecture 68 Introducing Weave Networking Model

Lecture 69 Pod to Pod Communication Flow

Lecture 70 Introducing Different Types of Kubernetes Services

Lecture 71 Understanding Endpoints and EndpointSlices Objects

Lecture 72 Understanding NodePort Service

Lecture 73 Understanding LoadBalancer Service

Lecture 74 Introducing MetalLB Loadbalancer - Baremetal LB Solution for Kubernetes

Lecture 75 Exposing Deployment Using LoadBalancer Service

Lecture 76 Understanding ExternalName Service

Lecture 77 Ingress: Managing HTTP and HTTPS Routing in Kubernetes

Lecture 78 Understanding Ingress Object Configuration

Lecture 79 Understanding Ingress Traffic Routing Flow with example

Lecture 80 Ingress: Simple fanout

Lecture 81 Ingress: Name Based Virtual Routing

Lecture 82 Ingress: Default Backend

Section 7: Authentication and Role Based Access (RBAC) in Kubernetes

Lecture 83 Introduction

Lecture 84 Different methods to Authenticate to Kubernetes

Lecture 85 Understanding Service Account Authentication

Lecture 86 Understanding Static Authentication Using Token file

Lecture 87 Understanding Client Certificate Authentication Method

Lecture 88 Managing TLS Certificates in Kubernetes Cluster

Lecture 89 Generating TLS Certificates for User/Group

Lecture 90 Adding User and Context to kubeconfig file

Lecture 91 Introducing Open ID Connect (OIDC) Authentication Flow

Lecture 92 Configuring Kubernetes to Use OIDC (Okta) Authentication

Lecture 93 Introducing Webhook Authentication

Lecture 94 Using Authenticating Proxy

Lecture 95 Introducing Anonymous Requests

Lecture 96 Introducing Authorization and different modes

Lecture 97 Introducing Request Attributes used in Authorization

Lecture 98 Introducing ABAC Authorization

Lecture 99 Understanding RBAC Authorization

Lecture 100 Understanding ClusterRole and ClusterRoleBinding Objects-Part1

Lecture 101 Understanding ClusterRole and ClusterRoleBinding Objects-Part2

Lecture 102 Understanding Role and RoleBinding Objects

Lecture 103 Configuring RBAC to Assign Permissions to Service Account

Lecture 104 Configuring RBAC to Grant Cluster Wide Read-Only Access to User (API Resources )

Lecture 105 Configuring RBAC to Grant Namespace-scoped Admin Access to User (API Resources )

Lecture 106 Configuring RBAC to Assign Permissions to Static Auth User at Group Level

Lecture 107 Introducing built-in Kubernetes Groups

Lecture 108 Assigning built-in Group to User to Assign Permissions-Client Certificate Auth

Lecture 109 Introducing Admission Controllers

Section 8: Scheduling Pods in Kubernetes

Lecture 110 Introduction

Lecture 111 Recap: Kubernetes Pod(s) Scheduling Process

Lecture 112 Assigning Pods to Node Using nodeSelector

Lecture 113 Introducing Affinity and Anti-Affinity Constraints

Lecture 114 Understanding Node affinity and types of Node affinity

Lecture 115 Understanding Affinity Operators

Lecture 116 Understanding Node Affinity Weight

Lecture 117 Understanding Inter-Pod Affinity and Pod Anti-Affinity

Lecture 118 Using Inter pod affinity to group of pods themselves

Lecture 119 Using Inter pod affinity to constrain pods to wrt other pods

Lecture 120 Understanding Taints and Tolerations

Lecture 121 Assigning Pod to specific node using nodeName field

Section 9: Kubernetes Persistent Volumes and Persistent Volume Claims

Lecture 122 Introduction

Lecture 123 Recap : Kubernetes volume types

Lecture 124 Why we need persistent volumes ?

Lecture 125 Introducing PersistentVolume(PV) and PersistentVolumeClaims(PVC)-Part1

Lecture 126 Introducing PersistentVolume(PV) and PersistentVolumeClaims(PVC)-Part2

Lecture 127 Lifecycle of PersistentVolume and PersistentVolumeClaim

Lecture 128 Types of Persistent Volumes

Lecture 129 Introducing StorageClass Object

Lecture 130 Dynamic Provisioning of PVs

Lecture 131 Introducing StatefulSet

Lecture 132 Example Use Case of StatefulSet

Section 10: Kubernetes Cluster Administration

Lecture 133 Introduction

Lecture 134 Cordon/Uncordon Kubernetes nodes

Lecture 135 Draining a Node

Lecture 136 Upgrading Kubernetes Cluster and Version Skew Policy

Lecture 137 Upgrading Kubernetes Control Plane Node

Lecture 138 Upgrading Worker Nodes

Lecture 139 Backup & Restore of etcd Database

Lecture 140 Understanding Kubernetes Jobs

Lecture 141 Understanding Kubernetes CronJobs

Ideal for Learners seeking a strong foundation in Kubernetes Fundamentals