Kubernetes is like the Javascript of NPM, a new tool every week, very good at complicated things, but simple things are complicated. It seems to be dominant docker server management atm, but not sure if it will stay like that.
Ask HN: What is the fastest way to ramp up on DevOps, k8 and GCP?
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Re: Ask HN: What is the fastest way to ramp up on DevOps, k8 and GCP?
#12Most people learn these skills on the job which is in my opinion the right approach for fast-changing tech stacks like k8 that can be out of fashion tomorrow. It is easier to learn something when you have a concrete need for it and know what you concretely need.
Re: Ask HN: What is the fastest way to ramp up on DevOps, k8 and GCP?
#13Having a credit card is the hardest part to me. All of setup step is simple, there're many resources that you can follow and learn all in 1,2 days.
Wish I had your confidence and/or your learning abilities.
Re: Ask HN: What is the fastest way to ramp up on DevOps, k8 and GCP?
#14Heya, you have the exact same issue as I am. I needed to deploy our apps back then (we're in a team of 2) after developing for 1.5 years in small company. Boss decided to suddenly go with GCP, then I decided that I want to use K8s (which paid off finally!).
Things I started doing was to follow tutorial in k8s, it is a LOT to take in. Install minikube, start with simple Deployment sets and deploy with apply instead of helm. Then you can go from there.
I reckon after you learn k8s all you need to do is to spin up GKE which you should learn after. Depends on what you need, you might need to setup external LB from GCP. I started with nginx-ingress, works amazing, setup the LB automatically and everything.
In summary, k8s docs is your best shot, start slow from tutorial, practice practice and you have to read what's the problem when something fails
Rather than looking how to debug, these 2 commands cover my needs most of the time: kubectl logs kubectl describe
Re: Ask HN: What is the fastest way to ramp up on DevOps, k8 and GCP?
#15For k8s, look into https://github.com/kelseyhightower/kubernetes-the-hard-way - I did it using GCP, which would expose you to a little bit of that, too.
Re: Ask HN: What is the fastest way to ramp up on DevOps, k8 and GCP?
#16Having a credit card is the hardest part to me. All of setup step is simple, there're many resources that you can follow and learn all in 1,2 days.
you can hand me your credit card if it helps you no problem
Re: Ask HN: What is the fastest way to ramp up on DevOps, k8 and GCP?
#17Kubernetes is like the Javascript of NPM, a new tool every week, very good at complicated things, but simple things are complicated. It seems to be dominant docker server management atm, but not sure if it will stay like that.
I'm sorry but what you wrote I find very untrue. K8s is bloat, but comparing it to NPM is very unfair towards K8s.
I often see developers or admins who ask questions how to setup their "simple" setup in plain docker on dev machine, while all they have trouble with - networking, volumes, exposing services - is actually very simple with minikube. There is more cool learning resources as well, IMO. It's even easier if you use cloud providers. Creating a working cluster on Scaleway takes a minute and you can't really screw anything up. You'll waste more time looking for a proper credit card, or figuring how basic user auth and privileges work on AWS, etc..
Yes, there is a lot of "magic in the background", but I have not yet seen any developer who reviewed all 1000 dependencies in their Angular Hello World application...
The K8s itself is quite stable from simple user's perspective and does not follow very rapid changes. I am able to easily follow old tutorials, books and documentation that was not updated in a long time without much issues. If something was broken I usually knew how to fix that after first basic k8s training. Core concepts did not change much, or at all. Some things got tidied up, like storage abstraction, but it makes sense and it's nothing new. A lot of cloud integration is build into K8s for years, some integrations like ... ingresses that implement certain external products are delivered mostly by vendors and it's quite easy to find options available.
There is a lot of mess into implementing proper production or large scale setup, misconceptions on how storage is handled and "why plain k8s does not provide Read Write Many storage out of the box?" kind of questions at the start. But a lot of that are issues that exist in any on premise infrastructure and has to be handled with a personal touch - taking in to account what you already have.
Re: Ask HN: What is the fastest way to ramp up on DevOps, k8 and GCP?
#18There is a series of Google-created Kubernetes/GKE courses on Coursera that include hands-on labs where you get to try stuff on GKE without paying usage fees. The course content is a bit wanting (it sometimes feels more like an advert for GCP products than a course), but if you watch the videos that look relevant and do the labs, I think you’ll get something out of it. Coursera does cost money but has a free trial.
I can second this suggestion.
I've been doing these GCP and GKE related courses the last few months as an experienced full-stack developer who is expanding their skill set be to fullerer-stack(?).
The hands-on "labs" might feel like you are mindlessly "following along" with the tutorial but you actually learn quite a lot. The "labs" are also safe in the sense that you can't shoot yourself in the credit card.
Yes, there are clearly some small parts of the courses which were later inserted as ads for new services, but it is not a big deal.
I do recommend learning the basics of what GCP has to offer though and not just concentrating 100% on k8s/GKE.
Re: Ask HN: What is the fastest way to ramp up on DevOps, k8 and GCP?
#19It sort of depends on what you are building. I work on web apps and services and there are so many things in k8s and GCP to use that its like rabbit-holes all the way down. You can get overwhelmed easily with stuff you probably don't need.
You can work on what is running on your container(s) locally using docker. I would suggest reading thru k8s docs and using minikube (https://kubernetes.io/docs/tutorials/hello-minikube/) to understand things.
Start small and get basics working, then iterate. You will likely experience aha moments later on and want to re-do things. The good thing is you are defining infrastructure via software.
Re: Ask HN: What is the fastest way to ramp up on DevOps, k8 and GCP?
#20A DevOps guy I worked with at a previous job spoke very highly of the courses at https://acloudguru.com/
I also recommend acloudguru, they have very nice courses about Kubernetes and GCP, which provides a very good basis. I especially liked the certification courses - even if you do not pursue for a certification. For example, "Google Professional Cloud Architect" course helps you dive into GCP ecosystem and get very short overview about each of the service (purpose, limitations, specifics).
For anyone, who is very fresh in k8s topic and don't won't want to spent a cent for learning I recommend starting from edX course [0]. It provides a nice introduction and great notes, which you can copy as some cheatsheet. Such cheatsheet will be a definitely helpful hand in first weeks with k8s.