Before you enroll yourself to a formal school, or purchase a powerful computer to run Kubernetes clusters, consider the resources in this post to save some dough. I’ll share where you can get free lessons about this technology. In my opinion, it’s best to get hands on while learning, so I’ll include free tools to help you learn Kubernetes.
After following this guide, you will have tools to run Kubernetes-managed containers either on your local computer or using the cloud.
Tools to learn Kubernetes offline
I wish my laptop is perpetually connected to the internet, but like my other fantasies, this is yet to come true. Here are the tools you can use to continue learning Kubernetes while you’re offline:
Note: I did this and get decent performance on a computer with Corei5 CPU + 8GB RAM + SSD.
1. Install Visual Studio Code (free, capable, and extensible code editor). If you’re yet to start your Kubernetes learning journey and are wondering why do you need this, well almost all of the infrastructure you’d use will have to be coded.
2. Open Visual Studio Code and install the following extensions:
a. YAML
b. Kubernetes – After installing this one, you might be prompted to install the following tools (please do so):
b.1 kubectl – CLI of Kubernetes
b.2 helm – Package manager for Kubernetes
b.3 minikube – Helps install a local Kubernetes cluster on a single VM
3. Optional, it’s best to add the installation path of kubectl, helm, and minikube into your computer’s system environment so you can execute these command-line tools from any path.
a. Click on the gear icon of the Kubernetes extension, and then click on Extension settings.
b. Next, click on Edit in settings.json link.
c. Add these paths in your System Environment (go to System Properties > Environment Variables…)
Fork in the road: Hyper-V or Docker
When you use minikube start --driver [hyper-v | docker]
command, you will have to choose which driver to use – hyper-v or docker. If you’re using a version of Windows that can run Hyper-V, then it’s simpler to just go with that. Otherwise, you need to install Docker and then use minikube start --driver docker
command.
Tools to learn Kubernetes online
Well, the good news is you can use all the tools above if you’re connected to the internet. So, here are a few things that could complement your toolsets:
• Several lessons about Kubernetes includes online labs/sandbox for hands-on experience
• The lessons here are absolutely free
• You can spin up VMs if you need on-demand machines to run minikube elsewhere or set up an Azure Kubernetes Service.
Free lessons sources
For most beginners and those who are aspiring to get Kubernetes Administrator certifications, these free resources are more than enough. I earned my cert by going through the lessons here and plenty of hands-on experience.
• O’Reilly (no credit card required, free for 10 days)
• Microsoft Learn – Kubernetes (free, some lesson modules have free labs)
• KodeKloud (freemium, no credit card required, neat online labs)