Kubernetes Roadmap
Zero to production
The complete free Kubernetes roadmap, from your first pod to operators, storage, troubleshooting, and production operations. Built from our own course, workshops, articles, and labs.
8 stages · 43 resources ready · 8 in the works, all free · every stage ends with a checkpoint you can verify on a real cluster
Your journey: 43 steps. Check them off as you go, this page remembers.
Foundations
~1-2 weeksEverything else builds on a mental model of the control plane. Start here even if you have used kubectl before.
✓ Checkpoint: you can now
Explain to a colleague what the control plane does, and why pods (not containers) are the unit of scheduling.
⚡ Prove it
Draw the architecture from memory: API server, etcd, scheduler, kubelet, and what talks to what.
Run it locally
~a weekendTheory sticks when you break things. Get a cluster you can destroy without fear.
✓ Checkpoint: you can now
Spin up and destroy multi-node clusters without fear.
⚡ Prove it
Create a 3-node cluster, kill a node, and watch what happens to its pods.
Workloads & services
~2-3 weeksNow that you have a cluster, learn how apps actually run on it and how traffic reaches them.
✓ Checkpoint: you can now
Deploy a stateful app with services in front and explain the full traffic path.
⚡ Prove it
Deploy an app plus a database, expose it via ClusterIP, NodePort, and Ingress, and explain the difference.
Internals
~2-3 weeksYou can use Kubernetes; now learn what it does under the hood, because that is what debugging demands.
✓ Checkpoint: you can now
Answer 'what happens when I kubectl apply' end to end, from API server to running container.
⚡ Prove it
Follow one pod from apply to Running: watch the events, the scheduler decision, and the kubelet start.
Storage & secrets
~1-2 weeksStateless is easy. Real systems have state and credentials, and this is where clusters get hurt.
✓ Checkpoint: you can now
Choose the right secrets approach for a team and defend the choice.
⚡ Prove it
Wire External Secrets or Sealed Secrets into a demo app end to end.
Operators & CRDs
~2-4 weeksKubernetes' real power is extending the API itself. This is how the ecosystem you use every day is built.
✓ Checkpoint: you can now
Read any operator's CRDs and predict what its reconcile loop will do.
⚡ Prove it
Build a tiny operator with Kubebuilder that labels namespaces, and break its reconcile loop on purpose.
Security
~2-3 weeksWith workloads running, lock them down. Everything here comes up in real audits and real incidents.
✓ Checkpoint: you can now
Harden a cluster with RBAC, network policies, and admission control, and know which audit logs matter.
⚡ Prove it
Lock down a namespace so a compromised pod can reach nothing except its own database.
Production operations
~ongoingThe final stretch: keeping clusters alive under pressure. Upgrades, observability, chaos, and 3am debugging.
✓ Checkpoint: you can now
Debug a broken cluster under pressure and upgrade one without downtime.
⚡ Prove it
Break your local cluster on purpose (kill etcd, wedge a node) and recover it.
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