Late last year, I decided that I needed to learn Kubernetes. If you go to https://www.cncf.io/certification/training/ the first link says FREE and goes to edx.org’s Introduction to Kubernetes course. The only issue is if you want to really get anything out of the course, you have to pay. I don’t really have an issue with paying for anything, but in this case the value for money really isn’t there. The course materials are almost all text and aren’t fundamentally better than the documentation at https://kubernetes.io/docs/home/. There are a few videos of okay quality. The feedback consists solely of multiple-choice quizzes. There are zero hands-on labs. Needless to say, I will not be purchasing any more K8S training from edx. They can do better! I took a Python course at edx and it was quite rigorous and involved lots of graded homework utilizing automated tests that ran against your code. Now, I’m a former CS student so a lot of the material was not new, but one of these days I will pay for the follow-on course (at edx!) So, you can be pretty sure the bulk of the blame lies not on edx, but whoever created the curriculum. Which unfortunately I think is the CNCF. Boo! Not Great!
Fortunately, there are lots of much, much better alternatives. The one I chose was KodeKloud. I have heard of alternative sites like A Cloud Guru but as I haven’t had any personal experience with them, I can’t really say anything about the quality. I have had people tell me they think A Cloud Guru is pretty great. I went with KodeKloud for two reasons, the first of which is that they have some courses available for free for you to check them out. AFAIK, there is nothing “limited” about the free courses; you get to do hands-on labs and you get a certificate of completion at the end. I took their Introduction to Docker course (some of which was review) and was impressed, but not enough to pay for it. What tipped me over the edge was The Free Week. Sorry, it’s already over, but they had a week at the end of April 2023 where you had access to their entire catalog. It was great. For a grand total of $0 I went through Kubernetes for the Absolute Beginner and got a good way through their Certified Kubernetes Administrator course. A word of advice, if you are going to take their CKA course, skip the Absolute Beginner course as all the material is covered in more depth in the CKA course. Additionally, if you’ve taken the edx course, the absolute beginner course will be redundant as well. What can I say, I’m a completionist.
I did say I got through a big chunk of their CKA course. I was happy enough with the material that I stuck a crowbar in my wallet and started paying on a monthly basis. I chose the “Standard” plan, as I like to build my own playgrounds and the cost is significantly higher for the Premium option. As of writing this, I have just completed the CKA course. Huzzah for me.
I don’t think anything is perfect and I do have some quibbles about the courses I’ve taken so far. The notes and references you get from the videos are just raw dumps of the presentations, so they aren’t particularly valuable as references. In my opinion, they need to spend more time on authentication, authorization and RBAC. The labs occasionally have “availability” issues, but nothing to really complain about. The troubleshooting labs rely far too much on monkeying with configuration files that (in my opinion) will never ever get touched so I don’t think they are entirely realistic. Some of the lab questions can be vaguely worded or rely on techniques that weren’t covered in the video lectures. But these issues are not endemic. They do put a good emphasis on using the K8S docs to work in problems in the labs, which is apparently the only resource available to you during the CKA exam itself. But it boggles my mind how they completely ignore “kubectl explain”. It’s not even mentioned once.
Finally, I cannot stress enough you absolutely MUST install minikube and DO STUFF on your own. Do not rely on any single source for your knowledge. A quick google will get you many free (and legal) links to recently published books on Kubernetes. Get an invite for Google Bard and ask it all the questions that you come up with during the lectures. But don’t use it as a crutch, especially during the labs.
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