Kubernetes Basics Explained in Plain Simple Language

Phase 1 — Daily Schedule:
7:00 AM — Wake up, exercise (30 min)
8:00 AM — Review the day's learning goals
9:00 AM — Learn + practice (2 hours)
   - Week 1: Why Kubernetes?
   - Week 2: Pods, nodes, clusters
   - Week 3: kubectl basics
   - Week 4: First deployment
12:00 PM — Lunch break
1:00 PM — Hands-on practice (2 hours)
   - Draw diagrams, run kubectl, deploy demo apps
3:00 PM — Mentor check-in / doubt session (30 min)
4:00 PM — Assignment work (1 hour)
5:00 PM — Review notes, plan tomorrow
6:00 PM — Break / exercise
8:00 PM — Read Kubernetes docs / blogs (30 min)
10:00 PM — Wind down

Week 1 Review:
□ Can I explain Kubernetes in plain English?
□ Do I know the difference between containers and VMs?
□ Do I understand what a cluster is?

Week 2 Review:
□ Do I understand what a pod is?
□ Do I understand what a node is?
□ Can I draw a cluster diagram?

Week 3 Review:
□ Can I install kubectl?
□ Can I run kubectl get pods / nodes / cluster-info?
□ Do I understand namespaces?

Week 4 Review:
□ Have I deployed an app?
□ Can I scale it to 3 replicas?
□ Can I delete a deployment cleanly?

Phase 2 — Daily Schedule:
7:00 AM — Wake up, exercise (30 min)
8:00 AM — Review the day's learning goals
9:00 AM — Learn + practice (2 hours)
   - Week 5: Deployments
   - Week 6: Services
   - Week 7: ConfigMaps & secrets
   - Week 8: Ingress
12:00 PM — Lunch break
1:00 PM — Hands-on practice (2 hours)
   - Roll out updates, expose apps, wire up ingress
3:00 PM — Mentor check-in / doubt session (30 min)
4:00 PM — Assignment work (1 hour)
5:00 PM — Review notes, plan tomorrow
6:00 PM — Break / exercise
8:00 PM — Read Kubernetes docs / blogs (30 min)
10:00 PM — Wind down

Week 5 Review:
□ Do I understand what a Deployment does?
□ Can I scale a deployment to 3 replicas?
□ Can I roll out a new image safely?

Week 6 Review:
□ Can I create a Service for my app?
□ Do I understand ClusterIP vs NodePort vs LoadBalancer?
□ Have I exposed an app to my browser?

Week 7 Review:
□ Can I create a ConfigMap?
□ Can I create a Secret?
□ Have I moved config out of my image?

Week 8 Review:
□ Do I understand what Ingress does?
□ Have I set up path-based routing?
□ Have I routed two apps?

Phase 3 — Daily Schedule:
7:00 AM — Wake up, exercise (30 min)
8:00 AM — Review the day's learning goals
9:00 AM — Learn + practice (2 hours)
   - Week 9: Scaling
   - Week 10: Health checks
   - Week 11: Logs & metrics
   - Week 12: Capstone
12:00 PM — Lunch break
1:00 PM — Hands-on practice (2 hours)
   - Scale apps, add probes, tail logs, ship capstone
3:00 PM — Mentor check-in / doubt session (30 min)
4:00 PM — Assignment work (1 hour)
5:00 PM — Review notes, plan tomorrow
6:00 PM — Break / exercise
8:00 PM — Read Kubernetes docs / blogs (30 min)
10:00 PM — Wind down

Week 9 Review:
□ Do I understand Horizontal Pod Autoscaler?
□ Have I scaled on CPU or memory?
□ Have I seen pods increase when load grows?

Week 10 Review:
□ Do I understand liveness probes?
□ Do I understand readiness probes?
□ Have I added both to a deployment?

Week 11 Review:
□ Can I tail pod logs?
□ Can I read basic metrics?
□ Do I understand what happens when a pod crashes?

Week 12 Review:
□ Is my capstone app deployed?
□ Is it documented with YAML files?
□ Is it on GitHub?

kubectl cheatsheet — the 15 commands you actually use:

# See what's running
kubectl get pods
kubectl get deployments
kubectl get services
kubectl get nodes

# Look closer at a resource
kubectl describe pod 
kubectl logs 
kubectl logs -f 

# Apply changes
kubectl apply -f my-app.yaml

# Scale
kubectl scale deployment my-app --replicas=5

# Roll out a new image
kubectl set image deployment/my-app my-app=my-app:v2

# Clean up
kubectl delete -f my-app.yaml

# Debug
kubectl exec -it  -- sh
kubectl port-forward svc/my-app 8080:80

# Context (which cluster am I talking to?)
kubectl config current-context

Starter deployment YAML — my-app.yaml

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: my-app
spec:
  replicas: 3
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: my-app
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: my-app
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: my-app
        image: nginx:latest
        ports:
        - containerPort: 80
        readinessProbe:
          httpGet:
            path: /
            port: 80
          initialDelaySeconds: 5
        livenessProbe:
          httpGet:
            path: /
            port: 80
          initialDelaySeconds: 15

---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
  name: my-app
spec:
  selector:
    app: my-app
  ports:
  - port: 80
    targetPort: 80
  type: NodePort

# Apply with: kubectl apply -f my-app.yaml

Weekly Learning Tracker:

Week: _____
Topics covered:
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2. 
3. 

kubectl commands practised: _____
YAML files written: _____
Issues hit & fixed:
1. 
2. 

What I learned:
1. 
2. 

Next week's focus:
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