Free Online Course · Self-paced

Kubernetes Tutorial for Beginners & Experienced

Free Kubernetes tutorial that takes you from cluster install to CKA/CKAD-level topics - pods, deployments, RBAC, networking, Helm, security, autoscaling. 59 hands-on lessons across 11 chapters, every example tested on real multi-node clusters.

  • 59 parts
  • ~672 min total
  • Beginner to Advanced
  • Updated Jul 2026
Reviewed Deepak Prasad
Start the course View syllabus
Kubernetes Tutorial for Beginners & Experienced
By Last updated

This Kubernetes tutorial takes you from Beginner to Pro with 59 hands-on lessons covering both the CKAD and CKA exam syllabi. Every chapter is written so you can run the YAML against a real cluster - either a local Minikube/kind setup or a multi-node cluster on AWS - and every command output is from a working environment.

Start with Setup Kubernetes Cluster if this is your first time - get a cluster running before pods, deployments, and networking. The sidebar and syllabus below follow the same eleven-chapter path. If you already know the basics, jump to any chapter; each lesson is self-contained but the order builds on the previous topic.

Click Start the course to begin with Minikube, or use the syllabus to skip directly to what you need.

What you'll learn

  • Install single-node and multi-node Kubernetes clusters on Minikube, kubeadm and AWS EC2
  • Master core workload primitives - Pods, Deployments, ReplicaSets, StatefulSets, DaemonSets, Jobs
  • Configure storage, ConfigMaps, Secrets and projected volumes the right way
  • Lock down clusters with RBAC, Pod Security, Network Policies and SecurityContext
  • Package and ship apps with Helm charts, hooks and named templates
  • Operate a cluster - upgrades, autoscaling, health checks, monitoring and OOM debugging

Prerequisites

  • Comfortable with Linux command line and basic networking concepts
  • Familiarity with containers (Docker basics - run, build, image, registry)
  • A workstation that can run a multi-node cluster (8 GB RAM minimum, 16 GB recommended) or an AWS/GCP free-tier account
  • Basic YAML knowledge (you will be writing a lot of YAML)

Syllabus

11 chapters · 59 lessons · ~672 min of reading

  1. 1 Setup Kubernetes Cluster 7 lessons
    1. Part 1 Install single-node cluster with Minikube 7 min read
    2. Part 2 Install multi-node cluster with kubeadm (Weave Net CNI) 24 min read
    3. Part 3 Install multi-node cluster on Ubuntu (Calico CNI) 11 min read
    4. Part 4 Multi-node cluster on Rocky Linux (Containerd) 10 min read
    5. Part 5 Install Kubernetes cluster on AWS EC2 27 min read
    6. Part 6 Deploy an EKS cluster with Terraform 15 min read
    7. Part 7 Check the Kubernetes cluster version 7 min read
  2. 2 Core Concepts 6 lessons
    1. Part 8 Kubernetes architecture overview 10 min read
    2. Part 9 Kubernetes namespaces 9 min read
    3. Part 10 Labels, selectors and annotations 10 min read
    4. Part 11 Add labels to nodes 5 min read
    5. Part 12 Add labels to running pods 6 min read
    6. Part 13 Kubernetes API server explained 12 min read
  3. 3 Workloads — Pods and Controllers 9 lessons
    1. Part 14 Kubernetes pods 15 min read
    2. Part 15 ReplicaSet and ReplicationController 14 min read
    3. Part 16 Deployments and rolling updates 14 min read
    4. Part 17 Kubernetes StatefulSets 10 min read
    5. Part 18 Kubernetes DaemonSets 9 min read
    6. Part 19 Autoscaling pods (HPA / VPA) 10 min read
    7. Part 20 Init containers 4 min read
    8. Part 21 Sidecar and multi-container pod pattern 17 min read
    9. Part 22 Kubernetes CronJob scheduler 6 min read
  4. 4 Resources and Scheduling 6 lessons
    1. Part 23 Pod resource requests and limits 7 min read
    2. Part 24 Monitor pod and container resource usage 9 min read
    3. Part 25 Namespace ResourceQuota 13 min read
    4. Part 26 PodDisruptionBudget 7 min read
    5. Part 27 Node affinity and anti-affinity 7 min read
    6. Part 28 Set ulimit in Kubernetes pods 17 min read
  5. 5 Storage and Volumes 2 lessons
    1. Part 29 Kubernetes volumes overview 13 min read
    2. Part 30 Persistent volumes and PVCs 16 min read
  6. 6 ConfigMaps and Secrets 6 lessons
    1. Part 31 Kubernetes ConfigMaps 11 min read
    2. Part 32 Kubernetes Secrets 11 min read
    3. Part 33 mountPath vs subPath 6 min read
    4. Part 34 Projected volumes (multiple secrets, one dir) 6 min read
    5. Part 35 Mount ConfigMap as file in existing directory 5 min read
    6. Part 36 Update ConfigMaps and Secrets without pod restart 6 min read
  7. 7 Networking and Services 5 lessons
    1. Part 37 Kubernetes networking model 34 min read
    2. Part 38 Services — ClusterIP, NodePort, LoadBalancer 12 min read
    3. Part 39 Kubernetes DNS troubleshooting (CoreDNS recovery) 20 min read
    4. Part 40 Expose services with Ingress 9 min read
    5. Part 41 kubectl port-forward 7 min read
  8. 8 Security 8 lessons
    1. Part 42 Securing a Kubernetes cluster 13 min read
    2. Part 43 Authentication and authorization 7 min read
    3. Part 44 ServiceAccounts 10 min read
    4. Part 45 Kubernetes RBAC 13 min read
    5. Part 46 SecurityContext explained 17 min read
    6. Part 47 SecurityContext capabilities 11 min read
    7. Part 48 Create a privileged pod (and why not to) 14 min read
    8. Part 49 Pod Security Policy / Pod Security Standards 12 min read
  9. 9 Health Checks and Probes 1 lesson
    1. Part 50 Liveness and readiness probes 15 min read
  10. 10 Helm Charts 5 lessons
    1. Part 51 Helm charts introduction 14 min read
    2. Part 52 Helm named templates 15 min read
    3. Part 53 Helm hooks with examples 14 min read
    4. Part 54 Helm hook weight and ordering 7 min read
    5. Part 55 Fix "rendered manifests already exist" (Helm) 5 min read
  11. 11 Operations and Maintenance 4 lessons
    1. Part 56 Upgrade a Kubernetes cluster 12 min read
    2. Part 57 Add nodes to an existing cluster 9 min read
    3. Part 58 Remove nodes from a cluster 6 min read
    4. Part 59 Debug OOMKilled (exit code 137) 10 min read
Deepak Prasad

R&D Engineer

Founder of GoLinuxCloud with more than 15 years of expertise in Linux, Python, Go, Laravel, DevOps, Kubernetes, Git, Shell scripting, OpenShift, AWS, Networking, and Security. With extensive …