My Journey to Kubernetes | Pt. 1
Recently, I have had a shift of priorities which consists of almost exclusive focus around Kubernetes and the Kubernetes ecosystem. I am excited to be starting from the ground up and to begin working on new challenges and the unfamiliar for awhile. It almost feels like a fresh start and I am in a much needed break from things I have been doing the last few years as well as having something new to sink my teeth into. Although Kubernetes and “Kubernetes-like” architecture is not something completely new to me, I will have to admit that my deep knowledge of the platform is minimal.
I have done fairly well over the years keeping up with the project, reading some books, taking a couple training courses, as well as having a couple opportunities for POCs. Despite some involvement, I am finding myself having a hard time over the last weeks coming up with where I should begin my journey of my deep dive into the platform. “Beginner” stuff is proving far too easy and “Advanced” topics are not making any sense to me with my current experience.
The type of struggle that I mention above is the same kind of struggle that I have when I try to improve skills with a programming language. I have spent some time with the language before but have not gotten a chance to get comfortable with it and would like to improve the craft. With the new Kubernetes craze in the market, I would imagine that there has to be more Engineers out there just like me who share this struggle of having more than basic knowledge but definitely not expert level.
With that in mind, I would like to start a series of posts of my journey that describes and discusses things such as:
- Experiences with some of my tasks given
- Valuable knowledge from books, articles or videos
- General thoughts and questions
- Anything else that comes to mind
Hopefully I can provide some value to someone out there that is like me and not sure where to begin or what material is useful for someone with more than beginners knowledge.
With this being the first post, I want to keep it short and start off by sharing some of the material and tools that I am currently going through as well as some thoughts around them. Apologies if this is stuff you already know but the following is what I am finding most beneficial right now.
Kind (Kubernetes in Docker)
This is a super quick and easy way to begin playing around locally on your laptop with a small K8s cluster. I installed this so I can begin relearning “kubectl” commands and just playing around. This appears so far to be super helpful and will plan to use it much more in the future.
Programming Kubernetes
This book is a really interesting read if you are looking for deep knowledge learning of the Kubernetes API. It has examples and uses the Go programming language all the way through. I would recommend this book for not only users looking to develop apps against the Kubernetes API but also anyone who wants a deeper understanding of the Kubernetets API and components as the authors do a really great job covering. Im only a few chapters in but hooked.
Introducing Go
Not only do I want to become a Go programmer but makes learning Kubernetes much easier if you have Go knowledge. This is a very easy read and introduction into the language. I have not read the book all the way though and do not intend to. I am using it as more of a reference and have read most of the chapters more than once. Very good reference for the very beginner like myself.
Learnk8s.io
This is actually a company trying to book consulting services for Kubernetes training but I have found some really good free material on here just spending some time browsing. Some nice checklists to go through such as production best practices.
If you have any material, thoughts or anything to share I would love to hear about it. Hopefully I am able to give back to someone who is struggling like myself to get over that hump to the deeper level of knowledge. Really excited to be diving head first into this project and community!
