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hands-on lab

Kubernetes Observability: Monitoring, and Debugging

Difficulty: Intermediate
Duration: Up to 45 minutes
Students: 2,674
Rating: 4.3/5
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Description

An important consideration for any platform used to deploy production applications is observability. This Lab essentially answers how Kubernetes handles and helps you with observing everything that happens in the platform in terms of monitoring. Logging and monitoring are two pillars of observability. You will use what is built into Kubernetes and kubectl as well as how to extend the platform to use external monitoring systems. More specifically, you will use Metrics Server as an example of a monitoring system. These foundations give you powerful debugging skills to diagnose and resolve issues with applications running in Kubernetes.

This lab is valuable to anyone working with Kubernetes, but the content has been prepared considering topics described in the Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) Exam Curriculum. Completion of the lab will help you get hands-on experience, which is essential for passing the CKAD exam.

Learning Objectives

  • Understand liveness probes and readiness probes
  • Understand how to monitor applications in Kubernetes
  • Understand debugging in Kubernetes

Intended Audience

  • Kubernetes admins and operators
  • Application developers and DevOps engineers deploying applications in containers and using or considering Kubernetes
  • This Lab is recommended for Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) examinees

Prerequisites

  • Knowledge of Kubernetes Pod Design (Pods, Deployments, Services, Jobs)
  • Experience with kubectl

You can complete the Kubernetes Pod Design for Application Developers lab series to satisfy the prerequisites.

Updates

June 26th, 2025 - Updated to run Kubernetes 1.33
July 13th, 2024 - Updated cluster to Kubernetes 1.30
October 13th, 2023 - Updated Kubernetes version
September 6th, 2022 - Updated to run Kubernetes 1.24
January 10th, 2022 - Adjusted the kubectl top commands to target the kube-system Namespace
January 3rd, 2022 - Corrected the Namespace in the kubectl get events command

Environment before

Environment after

Covered topics

Monitoring
Deployment
Compute
DevOps
Kubernetes
Hands-on Lab UUID

Lab steps

Connecting to the Kubernetes Cluster
Using Probes to Better Understand Pod Health
Monitoring Kubernetes Applications

Lab Rules