Kubernetes Bootcamp

Objectives

This course follows a hands on workshop method and builds container orchestration skills on top of existing skills learnt in Docker Fundamentals. Participants learn how to built a production grade resilient, self healing infrastructure with kubernetes. They take the container images built earlier and deploy with the high availability, fault tolerance, scalability provided by kubernetes.

Flipped Classroom Methodology

This course follows a Flipped Classroom methodology, a blended model where participants come prepared with understanding of concepts by going through video/online content. The class time is maximized to perform practical activities to apply the concepts learnt earlier. Practice activities include taking up a use case and solving it by applying the techniques, or performing nano projects etc.

To make it successful, participants need to be prepared in advance, by going through the recommended pre class content to clear the concepts as well as by making sure their systems are prepared with all the software required, before the class. The pre class checklist given below can be handy for this purpose.

Who is this for ?

• This course is for someone who has already taken docker fundamentals course/has equivalent knowledge, and would like to learn how to extend it to orchestrate container deployments at production scale with kubernetes.
• If you are a Operations/Systems personnel and would like to learn how scalable, fault tolerant and high available infrastructures are built on or off cloud to orchestrate container based deployments, this course it for you.
• If you are a developer and would like to learn how to deploy your application stacks in production, on top of scalable, highly available and leverage features provided by kubernetes, this course is for you.
• If you are a QA, and if your organization has a staging/QA environment built on kubernetes, and you would like to understand how to leverage it for setting up automated test workflow and learn the primitives offered by kubernetes, this course is for you.
• You could be developer/operations personnel and be in charge of securing application infrastructure and setup auxiliary services such as monitoring, centralized logging etc. this course is for you.

Who is this not for ?

• If you are a advanced user of Kubernetes already, this course is definitely not for you.
• If you are looking to start with Kubernetes concepts, this course is not for you as it assumes basic understanding of Kubernetes and COEs. There is a free resource Kubernetes Quick Dive which you should go through before attending this workshop.
• If you are interested in learning docker/container orchestration on windows, this course is not ideal for you as it focuses on linux containers.
• If you expect to learn a technology which is mainly driven through a GUI, this course is not suitable for you. Using kubernetes requires you to write YAML specifications, use command line tools etc.

What will you do as part of this course ?

As part of this course you will,

• Design a scalable, resilient, secure solution for deploying microservices application stack in production using primitives offered by kubernetes.
• Install and configure a simple(non HA) multi node kubernetes cluster with kubeadm. You would also have a conceptual understanding of how to build a production quality cluster with high availability, scalability, redundancy and security considerations.
• Learn how applications from a micro services stack interconnect with services as well as expose public facing services with various options including nodeport, externalIP, ingress etc.
• Achieve Continuous Deployment with different release strategies such as Zero Downtime, Blue/Green, Canary etc.
• Learn how to manage persistent storage in a kubernetes environment
• Learn about the network primitives including CNI plugins, service networking and iptables, ingress etc.
• Deploy an application which is auto scalable, high available, and resilient to failures.

What is not covered ?

Even though this course covers many concepts related to kubernetes, since its a very vast topic, it still has the following areas uncovered.

• Advanced RBAC
• Cloud specific provisioning and integration
• HA deployment of a kubernetes cluster with multi masters
• In depth kubernetes administration
• Writing Micro Services Applications
• Alternate container runtimes e.g. rocker/rkt, runc

Pre Requisites

Following are the pre requisite skills to attend this course. Since its a beginner level course, no prior experience with linux containers is assumed.

Courses

You should have attended the following course, or have demonstrable knowledge with the topics included in the following course.

• Docker Fundamentals

Pre Assessment test will be conducted at the beginning of the course to asses the skills.

Skills

• Docker Basics
  • Running Containers
  • Building Images and writing Dockerfiles
  • Docker Compose
  • Docker Networking and Storage
• Linux/Unix Systems Fundamentals
• Familiarity with Command Line Interface (CLI)
• Fundamental knowledge of editors on linux (any one of vi/nano/emacs)
• Understanding of YAML syntax and familiarity with reading/writing basic YAML specifications

Hardware and Software Requirements

These are the prerequisites for each attendee.

Lab Setup : Instructions can be found at xxx

Supporting Content/Materials

Following is the supporting material which will be provided to you before/during the course

• Slides (online)
• Workshop (online link)
• Video Course - XXX by School of Devops

Pre Class Checklist

All participants should have completed the following checklist before attending the course .

• Successfully Completed Docker Fundamentals Course, or have equivalent skills.
• Verify your system meets the hardware pre requisites.
• Validate the setup : verify all pre requisite software is installed on your system and is functional.
• Join our kubernetes channel on gitter

Topics

Following are the topics which would be covered as part of this course. Detailed course outline follows.

• Design Workshop: Mapping Mogambo's Micro Services Architecture to Kubernetes
• Design Workshop: Production grade Kubernetes Architecture design
• Setup Kubernetes Cluster
• Advanced Pod Scheduling
• Publishing Applications with Services
• Achieving Application High Availability and creating Release Strategies with Deployments
• Adding configurations with ConfigMaps and Secrets
• Auto Scaling with Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA)
• Storage and persistence
• Adding security with Network Policies

Additional Topics if time permits

• Additional Controllers
• Centralized Log Management
• Cluster Maintenance

Detailed Course Outline

This is the detailed course outline with day wise list of contents

Day I

Introduction and Assessment

• Trainer, Class and Course Introduction
• Pre-Assessment Test
• Formation of Groups: Group of 3/4 participants is formed. Each group will collectively come up with the solutions design, which is then discussed in the class, which is followed by the implementation of a common solution.

Module 1: Design Workshop - Mapping Mogambo's Micro Services Architecture to Kubernetes

• Introduction to the Use Case
• Mogambo - The organization and the Application
• Architecture and Problem Statement
• Design Workshop
  • This is intended for the participants to come up with the strategy to deploy the application stack described with Kubernetes. Participants would come up with the structure of the code, map application deployment to kubernetes components e.g. deployments, services, ingress etc. and come up with the roadmap which is followed through rest of the workshop.

Module 2: Design Workshop: Production grade Kubernetes Architecture

• Specification of the problem statement
• Design Workshop: This is a design workshop where each group formed earlier comes up with a sample design for a high available, fault tolerant, scalable and secure kubernetes cluster using all the primitives they have learnt as part of the pre course exercise. This is followed by a quick discussion/review.

Module 3: Setup and configure kubernetes Cluster

• Setup 2/3 nodes with VirtualBox/Vagrant/Cloud
• Install kubernetes with kubeadm
• CNI Overview
• Network containers with CNI using weave/flannel/calico plugin
• Configure kubectl admin client
• Setup Kubernetes Dashboard
• Overview of kubernetes configurations
• Kubernetes RBAC overview - contexts, roles, serviceaccounts etc.
• Setup a project/environment namespace and switch to it

Module 4: Advanced Pod Scheduling

• Defining node/pod affinity and anti affinity
• Adding health checks
• Why and how to define pod resource limits
• Taints and tolerations

Module 5: Publishing Applications with Services

• Picking up the right type of a Service
  • Cluster IP and DNS
  • nodePort
  • externalIP
  • loadbalancer
  • headless services with Endpoints/ExternalNames
• Labels and Selectors
• Service API Specs * Types * Traffic Policy * Selector
• Services vs Ingress
• Creating service resources for applications and backing services

Module 6: Achieving Application High Availability and creating Release Strategies with Deployments

• Deployments and/vs Replication Controllers
• Deployment API Specs
• Defining replication specs
• Defining Deployment Strategies
  • Rolling Update
  • Recreate
  • Batch Size
• Deployment Operations
  • Describe
  • Rollouts
  • Rollbacks
  • Edit
  • Pause/Unpause
• Additional Release Strategies
  • Canary Relases
  • Blue/Green Deployments

Day II

Module 7: Adding configurations with ConfigMaps and Secrets

• ConfigMaps and Secrets Specs
• Injecting configurations as
  • Environment Variables
  • Files
• Distributing sensitive data with secrets

Module 8: Auto Scaling with Horizontal Pod Autoscaler (HPA)

• Scaling deployments
  • manually
  • autoscaling
• HPA Specs
  • Scaling metrics
    • default
    • custom
• Setting up monitoring for kubernetes
  • heapster
  • influxdb
  • gragana
• Creating autoscaling configs

Module 9: Storage and Persistence

• Persistent Storage Concepts
  • Storage Drivers
  • PersistentVolumes
  • PersistentVolumeClaims
  • StorageClass
• Setting up a database with persistent volume

Module 10: Securing with Network Policies

• Network Policy overview
• Network policy specs
• Defining network policy for the application stack

Additional Topics if time permits

Advanced Controllers

• daemonSets
• statefulSets
• jobs
• crons

Centralized Logging

• Centralized logging for kubernetes
• Setting up a ELK stack

Cluster Maintenance

• Cluster Upgrade
• OS Upgrade
• Backups and Restore

Badge : Kubernetes Champion

Successful completion of this course along with the project work and an assessment at the end of this course would qualify you to receive a Docker Champion badge by School of Devops. This badge is compliant with Mozilla's Open Badge Standards and can be added to your social profiles (e.g. LinkedIn) and is verifiable.

Example of a badge is as follows,

Reading List

Here is the list of curated resources which you could refer to to learn about docker before the training and and get an in depth understanding post training.

Youtube Resources

• Kubernetes Introduction by Kelsey Hightower
• Life of a Packet

Video Courses

• Scalable Micro Services with Kubernetes by Carter Morgan, Kelsey Hightower, Gundega Dekena

Safaribooks Online

• Kubernetes Up and Running - Kelsey Hightower

Tutorials

• Application Example Tutorials

• Application Stack Examples

• Official Kubernetes Bootcamp

• Kubernetes in 10 mins

• Kubernetes the Hard Way

• Kubernetes Cluster for the Hobbyist