Top Tips for Getting Started with Kubernetes
March 14, 2022

Jayne Groll
DevOps Institute

Kubernetes is increasingly important to organizations' DevOps journeys as they look to manage cloud-native container implementation. The 2021 Annual Survey conducted by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) revealed that 96 percent of respondents reported using or evaluating Kubernetes. Although the uptick of Kubernetes is unprecedented, the learning curve is steep. Organizations know they will benefit from Kubernetes adoption, but they don't necessarily have the skills and technical knowledge to get started.

With so much at stake in delivering better software faster, it is important to set up for Kubernetes success from the very beginning. I asked some industry experts if they had tips on how to get started, and here are the top tips I received:

Parveen Kr. Arora, Co-Founder & Director, VVnT SeQuor

There's a lot to learn about Kubernetes. A good starting point is to use Kubernetes' own vocabulary, which people can develop proficiency with over time. The glossary in the official documentation can help anyone get up to speed on the lingo. Also, there are plenty of readily available other ways to learn Kubernetes from, i.e., articles, books, courses and more. Then one can gain expertise by acquiring professional certifications.

Erez Barak, VP of Observability, Sumo Logic, SKILup Day Sponsor

Today, Kubernetes is a technology that has huge promise, but has a deep learning curve, and is in its early stages of maturity with some serious barriers to mainstream adoption. For organizations to get started with Kubernetes, leaders should first allocate time and investment for continuing education to give team members the time and space to up-level their skills. This continuing education provides employees a great growth opportunity and is wonderful to build a bench of skills inside of your organization.

The other way to get started is to determine a project that your team can experiment with and "play safely" with the new technology. As part of that experimentation, teams can help determine how Kubernetes will impact the rest of the organization (e.g., the processes and tooling required to deliver, run and monitor that software).

Vishnu Vasudevan, Head of Product Engineering & Management, Opsera

There are two ways to look at getting started with Kubernetes. If a person is looking into how to help their organization get started, that requires several questions to be answered beforehand. These would include things like, is containerized app development suitable for the company?

Are we directly deploying and managing Kubernetes ourselves or leveraging a Platform-as-a-Service (PaaS) approach?

Who needs to be involved, and what standard practices do we need to develop as a team?

Suppose a person is approaching how to get started with Kubernetes themselves. In that case, the first step is gaining a basic understanding of the cluster orchestration system through learning materials or online tutorials. For example, Kubernetes.io provides an interactive tutorial that covers six learning modules that will help an individual learn a basic understanding of how to: deploy a containerized application on a cluster, scale the deployment, update the containerized application with a new software version, and debugging the containerized application. There are plenty of free and online resources the Kubernetes community has produced to help people just get started, as well as dedicated workshops and local meetups to help even the most novice of practitioners learn how it works and why it is important.

There are many considerations before adopting Kubernetes. Learning the terminology, investing in education, experimentation, and leveraging available resources online are all practical ways to get started. For more insights about what you need for Kubernetes success, join us for a full day of "how-to" learning during SKILup Day: Enterprise Kubernetes on March 17, 2022.

Jayne Groll is CEO of DevOps Institute
Share this

Industry News

September 21, 2023

Red Hat and Oracle announced the expansion of their alliance to offer customers a greater choice in deploying applications on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI). As part of the expanded collaboration, Red Hat OpenShift, the industry’s leading hybrid cloud application platform powered by Kubernetes for architecting, building, and deploying cloud-native applications, will be supported and certified to run on OCI.

September 21, 2023

Harness announced the availability of Gitness™, a freely available, fully open source Git platform that brings a new era of collaboration, speed, security, and intelligence to software development.

September 20, 2023

Oracle announced new application development capabilities to enable developers to rapidly build and deploy applications on Oracle Cloud Infrastructure (OCI).

September 20, 2023

Sonar announced zero-configuration, automatic analysis for programming languages C and C++ within SonarCloud.

September 20, 2023

DataStax announced a new JSON API for Astra DB – the database-as-a-service built on the open source Apache Cassandra® – delivering on one of the most highly requested user features, and providing a seamless experience for Javascript developers building AI applications.

September 19, 2023

Oracle announced the availability of Java 21.

September 19, 2023

Mirantis launched Lens AppIQ, available directly in Lens Desktop and as (Software as a Service) SaaS.

September 19, 2023

Buildkite announced the company has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire Packagecloud, a cloud-based software package management platform, in an all stock deal.

September 19, 2023

CrowdStrike has agreed to acquire Bionic, a provider of Application Security Posture Management (ASPM).

September 18, 2023

Perforce Software announces BlazeMeter's Test Data Pro, the latest addition to its continuous testing platform.

September 18, 2023

CloudBees announced a new cloud native DevSecOps platform that places platform engineers and developer experience front and center.

September 18, 2023

Akuity announced a new open source tool, Kargo, to implement change promotions across many application life cycle stages using GitOps principles.

September 14, 2023

CloudBees announced significant performance and scalability breakthroughs for Jenkins® with new updates to its CloudBees Continuous Integration (CI) software.