Introduction

You know Docker. You’ve written Compose files. You’ve built images, connected containers, and mounted volumes. Now your app needs to survive the real world — scaling, self-healing, zero-downtime deploys, secrets management, and multi-service coordination at scale. That’s what this book teaches.

What You’ll Build

By the end of this book, you’ll have deployed KubeShop — a five-service microservices e-commerce app — to both a local Minikube cluster and a production-grade Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) cluster, complete with Helm packaging, autoscaling, RBAC, and a full CI/CD pipeline.

graph LR
    U([User]) --> W[web :3000\nAPI Gateway]
    W --> C[catalogue :3001]
    W --> CA[cart :3002]
    W --> O[orders :3003]
    W --> P[payment :5000]
    C --> MDB1[(MongoDB)]
    O --> MDB2[(MongoDB)]
    CA --> R[(Redis)]

The stack: Node.js · Python · MongoDB · Redis · Docker · Kubernetes · Helm · GitHub Actions · ArgoCD · AKS

Prerequisites

You need these before starting. Run the check commands — if they pass, you’re good to go.

Tool	Version	Check	Expected Output
Docker	20+	`docker --version`	`Docker version 20.x...`
kubectl	1.28+	`kubectl version --client`	`Client Version: v1.28...`
Minikube	1.32+	`minikube version`	`minikube version: v1.3...`
Helm	3.x	`helm version`	`version.BuildInfo{Version:"v3...`
Git	any	`git --version`	`git version 2...`

💡 Tip: On Ubuntu/Debian, the quickest setup is:

# kubectl
curl -LO "https://dl.k8s.io/release/$(curl -L -s https://dl.k8s.io/release/stable.txt)/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl"
sudo install -o root -g root -m 0755 kubectl /usr/local/bin/kubectl

# minikube
curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/minikube/releases/latest/minikube-linux-amd64
sudo install minikube-linux-amd64 /usr/local/bin/minikube

# helm
curl https://raw.githubusercontent.com/helm/helm/main/scripts/get-helm-3 | bash

How to Use This Book

Each chapter is designed to take 30–60 minutes and ends with a hands-on lab. The pattern is always:

Concept (short) → Example (immediate) → Try it → Break it

Read linearly if you’re new to K8s.
Jump around if you have experience — every section is self-contained.
Do the labs. Reading about K8s is like reading about swimming. You have to get in the water.

🔥 The “Break It!” philosophy: The fastest way to understand a system is to watch it fail. Every chapter has intentional breakage exercises. Don’t skip them.

Chapter Roadmap

#	Chapter	Time	You’ll Be Able To
1	The Container Orchestration Problem	~45 min	Explain why K8s exists and navigate a live cluster
2	kubectl — Your Swiss Army Knife	~40 min	Query and control any K8s resource from the CLI
3	Pods — The Atomic Unit	~50 min	Create, debug, and destroy pods with confidence
4	Workload Controllers	~55 min	Deploy apps with zero-downtime rolling updates
5	Services	~45 min	Connect pods across namespaces using DNS
6	Ingress — HTTP Routing	~50 min	Route external traffic with NGINX and TLS
7	ConfigMaps and Secrets	~40 min	Externalize config and manage sensitive data
8	Storage	~45 min	Persist data across pod restarts
9	KubeShop Project	~60 min	Containerize a real 5-service microservice app
10	Deploying KubeShop	~60 min	Deploy a full microservices stack to Minikube
11	Health Checks & Self-Healing	~45 min	Configure probes and run chaos experiments
12	Helm	~55 min	Package and template K8s apps with Helm
13	Scheduling & Autoscaling	~50 min	Autoscale under load and control pod placement
14	Security	~55 min	Lock down a cluster with RBAC and Network Policies
15	Observability	~60 min	Set up Prometheus, Grafana, and log aggregation
16	CI/CD with GitHub Actions	~55 min	Build a full GitOps pipeline with ArgoCD
17	Azure Kubernetes Service	~60 min	Deploy KubeShop to a production cloud cluster
18	K8s Internals	~40 min	Explain what happens when you run `kubectl apply`
19	Troubleshooting Playbook	~35 min	Debug any pod, network, or storage failure

Ready? Let’s go to Chapter 1. →

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Kubernetes: From Zero to Production

Introduction

What You’ll Build

Prerequisites

How to Use This Book

Chapter Roadmap