Kubernetes hands-on labs
Eighteen real Kubernetes clusters, free. From your first Pod to a hardened, publicly routed application with least-privilege access — no videos, no reading, just work you do in a live environment.
- Level
- Beginner
- Duration
- 8.8 h
- Curriculum
- 4 modules
- lessons
- 18 lessons
- Labs
- 18 hands-on labs
- Updated
What is this course about?
A lab-only path through Kubernetes, free for everyone with a Kube-Ops Academy account.
Every item is a real single-node cluster you launch in the browser: you read a live control plane, run and break Pods, hand the cluster a desired state and watch it reconcile, publish an application through Ingress, lock its network down to default-deny, and finish by taking cluster-admin away from a workload without taking the workload down.
There are no video lectures and no reading-only lessons. Each of the four modules closes with a short quiz on what you just did.
18 hands-on labs in this course
How do you practise inside the course?
Lab lessons are part of the curriculum. From a lab lesson you launch a guided environment that opens in a new browser tab, work through the task in a real shell, and the result is reported back to your course progress.
- Launched from the lesson page — the environment opens in a new browser tab
- Guided practical tasks that match the lesson you just finished
- Every session has a time limit; the lesson shows when it ends
- Your lab result and score are recorded on the lesson when the session finishes
- Every lab in this course is included, free.
Labs in this course
- Your First ClusterModule 1 — Kubernetes Foundations · 20 min
- Pods and the LifecycleModule 1 — Kubernetes Foundations · 25 min
- Deployments and ReconciliationModule 1 — Kubernetes Foundations · 30 min
The learning loop
- 1Learn the concept
- 2Launch the lab
- 3Complete the task
- 4Validate the result
What will you learn?
Read a running control plane and scope your work with namespaces
Tell Succeeded, Failed and CrashLoopBackOff apart, and use logs as evidence
Hand the cluster a desired state in YAML and let the controllers keep it true
Deliver configuration as ConfigMaps and Secrets, and rotate it without a rebuild
Say what healthy means with probes, and what your workload costs with requests and limits
Follow a request from the outside world through Ingress, Service and DNS down to a Pod
Close a namespace to default-deny and open exactly one path
Give a workload an identity, grant it the minimum, and prove the denials as carefully as the grants
What does the curriculum cover?
Read a live control plane, then work up from a single Pod to a Deployment you manage from files.
- LabYour First Cluster20 min
- LabPods and the Lifecycle25 min
- LabDeployments and Reconciliation30 min
- LabWrite the Manifests Yourself40 min
How does the learning experience work?
1Learn through focused lessons
Short video and text lessons, one concept at a time.
2Launch the associated lab
A lab lesson opens a guided environment in a new tab.
3Complete a realistic task
Run the commands yourself and fix what breaks.
4Validate the result and continue
The session result lands on the lesson, then the next one unlocks in your progress.
Who is it for, and what do you need first?
This course is for
Engineers who have just been handed a cluster, developers whose applications now ship to Kubernetes, and anyone preparing for a CKA-style practical exam who wants the practice rather than the slides.
Before you start
Comfort in a Linux shell, and enough container background to know what an image is. If you have none, take Docker hands-on labs first — it is also free.
No cluster of your own is needed. Every lab runs a real Kubernetes cluster in your browser.
Official references
Who teaches this course?
Founder & instructor
Builds the Kube-Ops Academy courses and labs himself, and teaches Kubernetes and DevOps in Arabic on the Kube-Ops YouTube channel.
Frequently asked questions
Is this really free? Yes. Register, enrol, and launch. No subscription, no card.
How many times can I launch a lab? Five launches per lab, one at a time.
Do I need to install anything? No. The cluster and the terminal are in the browser.
Ready to start?
Eighteen real Kubernetes clusters, free. From your first Pod to a hardened, publicly routed application with least-privilege access — no videos, no reading, just work you do in a live environment.
Includes 18 hands-on labs.
Free
Go to enrollment