Introduction

Kubernetes is a popular tool with DevOps engineers, but learning and using it is difficult for beginners. So in this article, I want to introduce to everyone the books that have helped me learn Kubernetes from scratch.

Basic level

Kubernetes in Action

This book is for those who don't know anything about Kubernetes: Kubernetes in Action, Second Edition.

Kubernetes in Action is a great book that teaches you about Kubernetes by examples, you will learn the basics of Kubernetes in this book. After reading this book, you will know the following concepts:

What is Kubernetes?
Why do we need Kubernetes?
How does Kubernetes manage Containers?
How does Kubernetes scale Containers?
Kubernetes internal architecture.
...

Kubernetes Best Practices - Blueprints for Building Successful Applications on Kubernetes

This book is to practice more about Kubernetes: Kubernetes Best Practices.

You will learn how to install various applications using Kubernetes in this book. For example:

How to install the Ingress Controller?
How to install Prometheus?
How to install Elasticsearch, Logstash, and Kibana?
Best practice to manage ConfigMap and Secrets.
How to build CI/CD system on Kubernetes?
...

Middle

After reading the above books, you can use Kubernetes in the production environment. But if you want to understand more about Kubernetes, the next book will help you.

Managing Kubernetes

There are two roles when you work with Kubernetes: Kubernetes Developer and Kubernetes Administrator.

Kubernetes Developers write the manifest files for the application and deploy them on Kubernetes.

Kubernetes Administrators set up, manage, and operate the Kubernetes Cluster so that it can be easily used by the Developers.

The Managing Kubernetes book will show you how to manage Kubernetes.

You will learn:

How to run Kubernetes in Production?
How to manage the Kubernetes cluster?
How to back up the Kubernetes Cluster.
...

Kubernetes Operators

Operators are software extensions to Kubernetes that make use of custom resources to manage applications and their components. Operators follow Kubernetes principles, notably the control loop. Kubernetes Operators examples:

Argo Rollout.
Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes (ECK).
Confluent for Kubernetes.

Operators are clients of the Kubernetes API that act as controllers for a Custom Resource, for example:

Just a simple manifest file to deploy Kafka 😁. This is a guidebook for you to design and build the Operators: Kubernetes Operators.

Advanced

These two books are for understanding deep into Kubernetes.

GitOps and Kubernetes

This book will explain the concept of GitOps and how to build CI/CD in Kubernetes: GitOps and Kubernetes.

You will learn:

How to build the CI/CD?
Canary and blue-green deployment.
Security.
ArgoCD, Jenkins X, Flux.
...

Core Kubernetes

Finally, a book that will take your understanding of Kubernetes to a whole new level: Core Kubernetes.

This book will teach you the core components of Kubernetes. I haven't finished reading this book yet, but it is a great book.

Conclusion

Hoping these books will be useful to everyone. If you know good books, please recommend them to everyone 😁.

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About Quan Huynh

DevOps vs Cloud Engineer

Books to learn Kubernetes from beginner to advanced

Deep into Container — Build your own container with Golang