8-Week Kubernetes Certification Bootcamp (KCNA + CKAD + CKA)

8 weeks. Beginner to certification-ready. Real production Kubernetes taught from architecture internals to cluster operations, the way it actually works in companies. Built to clear KCNA, CKAD, and CKA in a single track.

Format: Live Classes | Duration: 8 Weeks | Schedule: 4 days/week (Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday), 2 hours each Timings: 9:30 PM – 11:30 PM IST | Total Classes: 32 | Language: English

Prerequisite: Basic Linux, Docker, and command-line comfort

Who This Bootcamp Is For

• DevOps Engineers
• Systems Administrators
• Cloud Engineers
• Site Reliability Engineers (SRE)
• Technical Leads and Infrastructure Architects
• Software Developers moving into deployment and platform work
• IT Project Managers involved in the software development lifecycle
• Security professionals responsible for containerized application security
• Application Developers wanting to understand the runtime environment
• Technical Support engineers specializing in container platforms
• IT professionals targeting orchestration and cloud-native deployments

Program Learning Architecture

Week 1: Kubernetes Architecture & Cluster Setup

The why, the how, and building your first multi-node cluster

Topics Covered

• The story behind Kubernetes, the why before the how
• Kubernetes cluster architecture deep dive (Control Plane, Worker Nodes)
• API Server internals and how every request flows through the cluster
• etcd architecture, role, and consistency guarantees
• Controller Manager and Scheduler under the hood
• kubelet and kube-proxy responsibilities on worker nodes
• Cluster communication flow end-to-end
• Kubernetes object model and the declarative philosophy
• Declarative vs imperative management, when to use each
• Installing Minikube for local development
• Building multi-node clusters with kubeadm from scratch
• Configuring master and worker nodes manually
• High availability Kubernetes concepts (stacked vs external etcd)
• Understanding kubeconfig and context switching
• Essential kubectl commands and productivity shortcuts
• Cluster verification and smoke testing

🏗 Project: Build a 3-node Kubernetes cluster from scratch with kubeadm, configure HA control plane concepts, switch between multiple cluster contexts, and verify cluster health with full diagnostic checks.

Week 2: Pods, Workloads & YAML Mastery

Building applications the Kubernetes way

Topics Covered

• Kubernetes namespaces and environment isolation
• Creating and managing namespaces for multi-team setups
• Pod fundamentals, what they are and what they aren’t
• Pod lifecycle and pod states explained
• Multi-container pods with init containers and sidecars
• Writing YAML manifests for production workloads
• Declarative resource management with kubectl apply
• Deploying pods with resource requests and limits
• Labels, selectors, and annotations, the metadata layer
• Deployments deep dive
• ReplicaSets and how scaling actually works
• Autoscaling fundamentals
• Rolling updates and rollback strategies
• Canary and blue-green deployment concepts
• Liveness, Readiness, and Startup probes
• Working with Jobs and CronJobs
• Pod Disruption Budgets for resilience
• Pod and deployment troubleshooting basics

🏗 Project: Deploy a multi-tier application using Deployments, configure all three probe types and PDBs, perform rolling updates with rollback, schedule recurring tasks with CronJobs, and walk through full pod failure troubleshooting.

Week 3: Scheduling & Persistent Storage

Production scheduling decisions and stateful data

Topics Covered

• kube-scheduler internals and decision flow
• Scheduling workflow from pod creation to node binding
• Node Selectors for basic pod placement
• Taints and Tolerations for dedicated node pools
• Affinity and anti-affinity rules for production workloads
• Scheduler policies and customization
• Resource Quotas and Limit Ranges for multi-tenancy
• Horizontal Pod Autoscaling with metrics
• Cluster resource optimization strategies
• QoS classes (Guaranteed, Burstable, BestEffort) and capacity planning
• Kubernetes volume architecture deep dive
• emptyDir, hostPath, and NFS volumes
• Cloud-based persistent storage options
• Persistent Volumes and Persistent Volume Claims
• Storage Classes and dynamic provisioning
• Access modes (ReadWriteOnce, ReadOnlyMany, ReadWriteMany)
• Reclaim policies and storage lifecycle
• Stateful application storage patterns
• Volume expansion and snapshots
• Storage troubleshooting workflows

🏗 Project: Configure complex pod scheduling with taints, tolerations, and affinity rules, set up multi-tenant resource quotas and HPA, and deploy a stateful application with dynamic provisioning, volume expansion, and snapshot-based recovery.

Week 4: Controllers, Workload Patterns & Networking

How traffic actually flows and how controllers keep state

Topics Covered

• Replication Controllers under the hood
• ReplicaSets deep dive
• DaemonSets for node-level workloads
• StatefulSets for stateful applications
• Advanced deployment patterns and self-healing
• How controllers reconcile state in production
• Introduction to writing your own CRDs and controllers
• Kubernetes networking fundamentals
• Pod-to-pod communication model
• Cluster networking and the flat network requirement
• DNS and CoreDNS deep dive
• CNI architecture overview
• Working with Flannel, Calico, and WeaveNet
• Services explained, ClusterIP, NodePort, LoadBalancer
• Service discovery mechanisms for pods
• Configuring services with YAML
• Ingress Controllers and Ingress rules
• Gateway API and modern routing types
• Network Policies for pod-to-pod access control
• Traffic flow troubleshooting

🏗 Project: Deploy a DaemonSet for cluster-wide logging, run a StatefulSet with stable network identity, build a custom CRD with a basic controller, and configure end-to-end networking with Ingress, Gateway API routing, and zero-trust Network Policies.

Week 5: Securing Kubernetes Clusters

Authentication, authorization, and hardening for production

Topics Covered

• Kubernetes security fundamentals and threat model
• Authentication mechanisms in Kubernetes
• Authorization with RBAC deep dive
• Creating Users, Groups, and Service Accounts
• Cluster Roles and Role Bindings
• Pod Security Standards (Restricted, Baseline, Privileged)
• Network Policies for zero-trust networking
• Managing TLS certificates in the cluster
• Secret management best practices
• Secure container image practices
• Admission Controllers, Validating and Mutating webhooks
• Implementing custom admission policies
• Kubernetes security hardening checklist
• CIS Kubernetes Benchmark walkthrough
• API server and etcd security
• Audit logging and compliance basics

🏗 Project: Build a secure multi-tenant cluster setup with RBAC roles, service accounts, network policies, pod security standards, and a custom admission controller enforcing organisational policies, then run a CIS benchmark scan and remediate findings.

Week 6: Observability, Helm & GitOps

Monitoring production clusters and modern deployment workflows

Topics Covered

• Kubernetes observability fundamentals
• Cluster logging architecture
• Monitoring control plane components
• Application monitoring strategies
• Metrics Server setup and usage
• Introduction to Prometheus and PromQL basics
• Grafana dashboards for cluster and application metrics
• Centralized logging with Loki and Promtail
• Troubleshooting using logs and metrics together
• Observability best practices
• Introduction to Helm and the package manager mindset
• Helm architecture and how charts work
• Writing your first Helm chart
• Helm repositories and chart distribution
• Developing Helm templates with Go templating
• Working with values files and overrides
• Helm release management and rollbacks
• Kustomize fundamentals and overlays
• GitOps principles
• ArgoCD overview and installation
• Automated Kubernetes deployments with ArgoCD

🏗 Project: Set up a full observability stack with Prometheus, Grafana, and Loki, package a multi-environment application as a Helm chart with values overrides, and deploy it through ArgoCD with automated GitOps workflows.

Week 7: Cluster Maintenance & Production Troubleshooting

Operating Kubernetes in production

Topics Covered

• Node maintenance strategies
• Draining vs cordoning nodes
• Cluster upgrade process and the kubeadm upgrade workflow
• etcd backup and restore procedures
• Certificate management and renewal
• Cluster recovery procedures
• Disaster recovery concepts
• Managing cluster health
• Kubernetes operational best practices
• Real-world application failure debugging
• CrashLoopBackOff deep dive
• Worker Node failure analysis
• Control Plane troubleshooting
• DNS and networking failure debugging
• Storage troubleshooting in production
• Performance bottleneck analysis
• kubectl debugging workflows
• Cluster recovery drills
• Incident response methodology
• High-pressure troubleshooting scenarios

🏗 Project: Perform a complete cluster upgrade with kubeadm, back up and restore etcd, simulate node and control plane failures and recover the cluster, then run through five real-world troubleshooting scenarios with full RCAs and postmortems.

Week 8: Certification Exam Mastery (KCNA + CKAD + CKA War Room)

Speed, strategy, and exam-day confidence

Topics Covered

• KCNA exam structure, format, and scoring
• CKAD exam environment walkthrough
• CKA exam environment walkthrough
• Time management techniques for hands-on exams
• YAML speed building drills
• kubectl productivity shortcuts and aliases
• Vim and tmux setup for the exam environment
• Bookmark strategy for the exam
• Scenario-based mock exams (full length)
• Troubleshooting speed drills
• The most common exam scenarios broken down
• Revision frameworks and cheat sheets
• Last-mile preparation strategy
• Resume and interview prep for Kubernetes roles

🏗 Project: Three full-length mock exams (one each for KCNA, CKAD, CKA), a personalised revision plan based on weak areas, and a complete exam-day playbook covering setup, time allocation, and recovery strategies.

What You Walk Away With

• Cleared certifications: KCNA, CKAD, and CKA
• A production-grade understanding of Kubernetes internals, not just commands
• Hands-on muscle memory from 8 projects across the cluster lifecycle
• Real troubleshooting reps from incident-style scenarios
• A resume-ready Kubernetes portfolio
• Recordings, exercises, and cheat sheets for life