Introduce
Kubernetes is a tool that is quite popular with DevOps brothers in recent years, but learning and applying it is a bit difficult for beginners. So in this article, I want to introduce to everyone the books that have helped me in learning Kubernetes from knowing nothing to applying it in practice. The books I recommend will go from basic to advanced.
Basic level
Kubernetes in Action
The first is a book for the ignorant of Kubernetes: Kubernetes in Action .
This is a great book that teaches you the basics of Kubernetes. You will learn theory and practice at the same time. For example, you will learn the following concepts in this book:
- What is Kubernetes?
- Why do we need it?
- How does Kubernetes help us in managing and running containers?
- What are the most basic components of Kubernetes?
- How to use Kubernetes to build a system with high availability.
- Kubernetes scaling.
- And many other concepts.
After reading this book, you will have a solid foundation on Kubernetes.
Kubernetes Best Practices – Blueprints for Building Successful Applications on Kubernetes
After you have mastered the theory, next you need to learn how to apply Kubernetes to practical systems, this book will help you: Kubernetes Best Practices – Blueprints for Building Successful Applications on Kubernetes .
This book will show you how to install many applications using Kubernetes, such as:
- How to install Ingress Controller.
- How to install monitoring system using Prometheus.
- How to install logging system using Elasticsearch, Logstash, Kibana.
- Best way to manage ConfigMaps and Secrets.
- How to build a CI/CD system on Kubernetes.
- …
Middle
After reading the above two books, you should be able to apply Kubernetes in practice, but if you want to dig deeper, the next books will help you dig a little deeper into Kubernetes.
Managing Kubernetes
When we work with Kubernetes, there will usually be two roles: Kubernetes Developer and Kubernetes Administrator.
Kubernetes Developers are the people who will write the manifest files for the application and deploy it on Kubernetes. The Kubernetes Administrators are the ones who will build the Kubernetes Cluster, then manage and operate it so that it can be easily used by the Developers.
This book will show you how to operate Kubernetes: Managing Kubernetes .
This is a book that will show you how to run Kubernetes in production, how to install Kubernetes in production, how to manage a Kubernetes cluster, and how to store and restore a Kubernetes Cluster.
Kubernetes Operators
Operators in Kubernetes are built on the concept of operator pattern . Operators will help us extend the functionality of Kubernetes, some examples of Kubernetes Operators:
- Argo Rollout.
- Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes (ECK).
- Confluent for Kubernetes.
With Operators, instead of having to write a lot of manifest files to deploy the application, we can simply write something like this:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 | <span class="token key atrule">apiVersion</span> <span class="token punctuation">:</span> platform.confluent.io/v1beta1 <span class="token key atrule">kind</span> <span class="token punctuation">:</span> Kafka <span class="token key atrule">metadata</span> <span class="token punctuation">:</span> <span class="token key atrule">name</span> <span class="token punctuation">:</span> kafka <span class="token key atrule">namespace</span> <span class="token punctuation">:</span> confluent <span class="token key atrule">spec</span> <span class="token punctuation">:</span> <span class="token key atrule">replicas</span> <span class="token punctuation">:</span> <span class="token number">3</span> <span class="token key atrule">image</span> <span class="token punctuation">:</span> <span class="token key atrule">application</span> <span class="token punctuation">:</span> confluentinc/cp <span class="token punctuation">-</span> server <span class="token punctuation">:</span> 7.2.0 <span class="token key atrule">init</span> <span class="token punctuation">:</span> confluentinc/confluent <span class="token punctuation">-</span> init <span class="token punctuation">-</span> container <span class="token punctuation">:</span> 2.4.0 <span class="token key atrule">dataVolumeCapacity</span> <span class="token punctuation">:</span> 10Gi <span class="token key atrule">metricReporter</span> <span class="token punctuation">:</span> <span class="token key atrule">enabled</span> <span class="token punctuation">:</span> <span class="token boolean important">true</span> |
Just a simple manifest file to deploy Kafka.
Here is a guidebook for you to design and build an Operators: Kubernetes Operators – Automating the Container Orchestration Platform .
Advanced
If you have finished practicing the above books and you still want to learn more about Kubernetes, I recommend you these two books, the next two books are a bit purely theoretical.
GitOps and Kubernetes
GitOps , this is a fairly new concept to me and I learned it through this book: GitOps and Kubernetes .
This book will explain to you the concept of GitOps and how to build CI/CD in Kubernetes. In this book, you will learn ways to organize your environment and build a deployment strategy with Git + Kubernetes such as:
- How will we organize the environment?
- How to build Pipelines?
- Strategies for product deployment: canary, blue-green, …
- Security issues.
- How to use GitOps tools like: ArgoCD, Jenkins X, Flux.
- …
Core Kubernetes
Finally, the book that will take your understanding of Kubernetes to the next level: Core Kubernetes .
As the name of the book, in this book it will teach you the core components of Kubernetes. Going from the basic concepts of Containers and the components that make up Containers, to Pods, storage systems and networks of Kubernetes, after reading it, you will have a very in-depth look at the Kubernetes engine. I haven’t finished reading this book yet, but in the first few chapters my understanding of Kubernetes has been greatly enhanced. For example, here’s an illustration of Pod from the book, drawing the entire Linux Namespaces layer.
This book is very good.
Conclusion
Above are the books that helped me in the process of learning about Kubernetes, hope it will be useful to everyone. If you know a good book, please recommend it to everyone in the comments section.