Marek Z.
Sample Desired state finally makes sense
The first lesson reframed Kubernetes for me. Everything else follows from controllers reconciling state.
Kubernetes fundamentals: deploy and run your first app
Learn Pods, Deployments, Services, configuration, storage and Gateway API by deploying a real application to a local cluster with kubectl
Created by Lena Fischer
- Updated September 2026
- English
- Beginner
What you will learn
- Describe the main parts of a Kubernetes cluster and what each does
- Deploy and update applications with Deployments and rolling updates
- Expose applications with Services and route HTTP traffic with Gateway API
- Configure applications with ConfigMaps and Secrets
- Use PersistentVolumeClaims for data that must survive restarts
- Debug failing workloads with kubectl describe, logs and events
Course content
How Kubernetes thinks
Configuration and secrets
- Video: ConfigMaps for settings 10 min
- Video: Secrets and what they do not protect 11 min
- Article: Rolling out configuration changes 8 min
Traffic from outside with Gateway API
- Video: Gateway API concepts 10 min
- Video: Routing by host and path 11 min
- Article: TLS termination and certificates 10 min
- Video: Ingress: reading what you will meet 8 min
Keeping applications healthy
- Video: Liveness, readiness and startup probes 12 min
- Article: Requests and limits 11 min
- Video: Rolling update settings and zero downtime 10 min
- Video: Scaling with the Horizontal Pod Autoscaler 10 min
Storage and stateful workloads
- Article: Volumes, PersistentVolumes and claims 11 min
- Video: Running PostgreSQL with a StatefulSet 12 min
- Video: Jobs and CronJobs 9 min
Debugging and next steps
- Article: A debugging routine for broken Pods 12 min
- Video: RBAC basics 10 min
- Video: Organising manifests with Kustomize 10 min
- Article: From kind to a managed cluster 8 min
- Quiz: Final check 6 min
Requirements
- Comfortable with Docker images and containers
- Basic command line and YAML familiarity
- Docker installed and about 8 GB of free memory
Description
Kubernetes has a reputation for being complicated, and parts of it are. The core ideas, though, are few and sensible: you describe what you want running, and controllers work continuously to make reality match. This course teaches those ideas by deploying one real application, step by step, on a cluster that runs on your laptop.
What you will learn
- How a cluster is organised: control plane, nodes and the API server
- Pods, Deployments and ReplicaSets, and why you almost never create Pods directly
- Services for stable networking, and Gateway API for HTTP routing from outside
- ConfigMaps and Secrets for configuration
- Persistent storage with PersistentVolumeClaims
- Health probes, resource requests and limits, and rolling updates
- Reading events and logs to understand what went wrong
How the course works
We use kind, which runs a Kubernetes cluster inside Docker containers, so you need nothing but Docker and kubectl. Everything is written as YAML manifests in a Git repository, applied with kubectl, and explained field by field the first time it appears.
You should already be comfortable with containers. If you can build an image and run it with Docker, you are ready.
Who this course is for
- Developers whose company is moving to Kubernetes
- Ops and support engineers who need to read and fix manifests
- Anyone preparing for deeper Kubernetes study or certification
Instructor
Lena Fischer
Container and Kubernetes trainer. Docker, clusters and production operations without the jargon
- 4.4 instructor rating
- 23 reviews
- 7,770 students
- 3 courses
- Sample
I run Kubernetes clusters and help development teams move their services into containers. Before that I was a backend developer, so I remember how confusing images, volumes and networking felt the first time.
My courses start from what you already know, a process on your laptop, and add one idea at a time: an image, a container, a Compose file, a Deployment, a Service. Every lesson has commands you can type and an explanation of what changed.
The advanced material comes from real incidents: crash loops, memory limits, failing probes and slow rollouts. I teach the debugging habits that help when the dashboard is red and you need answers.
Student reviews
Sophia N.
Sample Great to learn Gateway API from the start
Most courses still teach only Ingress. Starting with Gateway API and reading old Ingress manifests was the right balance.
Olu F.
Sample Debugging routine is gold
Pending, ImagePullBackOff and CrashLoopBackOff walkthroughs helped me fix a real issue at work the next day.
Asel B.
Sample Probes explained properly
The example of a liveness probe making an outage worse was eye opening. We changed our probes the same week.
Raj T.
Sample kind setup works perfectly
Being able to delete and recreate the cluster in a minute made me less afraid to experiment.
Tariq H.
Sample A solid foundation for work
I feel ready to read our team's manifests and make changes confidently. RBAC lesson was short but useful.
Clara S.
Sample Clear but needs memory
Content is excellent. My older laptop struggled with three kind nodes, so I used a single node cluster instead.
Henrik L.
Sample Good basics, a bit long
Very thorough. Some lessons could be shorter, but nothing was inaccurate.
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