Kubernetes is a production-grade container orchestration system that helps you maximize the benefits of using containers. Kubernetes provides you with a toolbox to automate deploying, scaling, and operating containerized applications in production.

This lab is meant to be completed while going through the Introduction to Kubernetes course on Cloud Academy. The lab creates a Kubernetes cluster for you to use as you progress through the course. All of the commands that are used in the course are included in the lab to make it easy to follow along with. You can also use the lab to experiment and try out different exercises in addition to what is explained in the course. Have fun in this Kubernetes playground!

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this lab you will be able to:

• Deploy single and multiple container applications on Kubernetes
• Use Kubernetes services to structure N-tier applications 
• Manage application deployments with rollouts in Kubernetes
• Ensure container preconditions are met and keep containers healthy
• Learn how to manage configuration, sensitive, and persistent data in Kubernetes

Intended Audience

This lab is intended for:

• Anyone deploying containerized applications
• Site Reliability Engineers (SREs)
• DevOps Engineers
• Operations Engineers
• Full Stack Developers

Prerequisites

You should be familiar with:

• Working with Docker and being comfortable using it at the command line

Updates

July 17th, 2024 - Updated to run Kubernetes 1.30

October 12th, 2023 - Updated Kubernetes version

June 12th, 2023 - Updated to run Kubernetes 1.26

October 25th, 2022 - Resolved an issue preventing the horizontal pod autoscaler from scaling down the deployment

September 26th, 2022 - Resolved an issue preventing nodes from joining the cluster

September 6th, 2022 - Updated to run Kubernetes 1.24

April 28th, 2022 - Updated to run Kubernetes 1.21

April 29th, 2021 - Updated to run Kubernetes 1.20, 80% faster startup time, and use a web terminal

February 14th, 2021 - Updated instructions to ensure the EC2 Instance Connect tab is selected when connecting

December 21st, 2020 - Added a comment to one of the Pods commands instructing that the curl command is not expected to return a response

October 14th, 2020 - Updated to run Kubernetes 1.19

September 8th, 2020 - Converted the lab playground to use a single lab step for a more streamlined experience

August 19th, 2020 - Updated to run Kubernetes 1.18