Full syllabus
The 10-day Kubernetes plan
Each day pairs focused teaching with a hands-on lab, building from your first pod to a production-style capstone.
📅 10 days
🧪 10 labs
🏁 1 capstone
☸️ 10 Days, Hands-On 1 use case per day
01Day 1: Kubernetes Fundamentals
- Introduction to Kubernetes, containers and orchestration
- Architecture: cluster, node, control plane, worker node
- Pods and namespaces
- kubectl fundamentals and your first deployment
- Hands-on use case: Deploy an Nginx app in a namespace, expose it with a ClusterIP service, and verify access with kubectl.
02Day 2: Kubernetes Networking
- Networking model and pod-to-pod communication
- Service discovery: ClusterIP, NodePort, LoadBalancer
- DNS in Kubernetes
- Network policies and securing traffic
- Hands-on use case: Connect two apps through a Service, then block unwanted traffic with a basic NetworkPolicy.
03Day 3: Kubernetes Objects & YAML
- Manifests and YAML best practices
- Labels, selectors and annotations
- Pods, ReplicaSets, Deployments, DaemonSet
- InitContainers and desired-state management
- Hands-on use case: Create a Deployment for a web app in YAML, add labels and selectors, and scale it from 2 to 4 replicas.
04Day 4: Deployments & Release Strategies
- Scaling, rollouts and rollbacks
- Recreate, Rolling Update and Blue-Green strategies
- Version management and zero-downtime concepts
- CrashLoopBackOff and ImagePullBackOff errors
- Hands-on use case: Deploy v1, upgrade to v2 with a Rolling Update, then switch traffic using a Blue-Green setup.
05Day 5: Configuration & Storage
- ConfigMaps, Secrets and environment variables
- Volumes, Persistent Volumes (PV) and Claims (PVC)
- Storage classes
- Stateless vs stateful applications
- Hands-on use case: Deploy an app that reads config from a ConfigMap and credentials from a Secret, storing uploads in a PVC.
06Day 6: Gateway API
- Gateway API architecture: GatewayClass, Gateway, HTTPRoute
- Traffic routing and host-based routing
- Exposing applications externally
- Gateway API best practices
- Hands-on use case: Expose two apps such as payment.cbc.com and order.cbc.com using Gateway API instead of Ingress.
07Day 7: Scheduling & Workload Placement
- Scheduler fundamentals and node selectors
- Node and pod affinity / anti-affinity
- Taints and tolerations
- Workload isolation and scheduling best practices
- Hands-on use case: Run a critical app only on dedicated nodes with taints and tolerations, and keep replicas apart with pod anti-affinity.
08Day 8: Resource Management & Reliability
- Requests, limits and QoS classes
- OOMKilled and CPU throttling
- Readiness, liveness and startup probes
- Horizontal Pod Autoscaler and health troubleshooting
- Hands-on use case: Run a memory-heavy app with low limits, observe an OOMKilled event, then fix it by tuning requests, limits and probes.
09Day 9: CI/CD & GitOps
- GitHub Actions CI: build images, testing, registry, pipeline secrets
- Automated deployment workflows and release automation
- GitOps with Argo CD: sync, self-healing, drift detection
- Rollbacks and version management
- Hands-on use case: Push code to GitHub, let GitHub Actions build and publish the image, then let Argo CD sync it into Kubernetes from Git.
10Day 10: Helm & AI-Powered Operations
- Helm architecture, charts, values.yaml and releases
- Installing, upgrading and rolling back with Helm
- K8sGPT and Ollama for AI-assisted cluster analysis
- Troubleshooting lab: CrashLoopBackOff, ImagePullBackOff, OOMKilled
- Hands-on use case: Package an app as a Helm chart, deploy with custom values, then use K8sGPT + Ollama to analyze a broken pod and explain the issue.
Life after the bootcamp
What you walk away with, and where you grow
Ten days in, you have real Kubernetes skills and proof. Then you keep growing through our community and freelancing network.
📜
A recognised certificate
Earn a CareerByteCode certificate showing you completed a hands-on, production-focused Kubernetes bootcamp.
🧪
11 use cases + a capstone
A portfolio of real deployments you can demo: migrations, GitOps, Gateway API, Helm and AI-assisted troubleshooting.
🚀
Production-ready skills
Confident, practical Kubernetes: deploy, scale, secure, automate and debug real workloads.
🌐
Grow through our community
Join a global community of engineers. Showcase your work, stay visible to recruiters, and speed up the opportunities that come your way.
💼
Earn through freelancing
Turn your DevOps and Kubernetes skills into income. Strong candidates are invited into our freelancing programs to get paid for real work.
Ready to start Day 1?
Join the next evening cohort and work through all 10 days with a practitioner.