DOCKER FOUNDATIONS AND CORE PRACTICALS

SESSION 1 — Docker Fundamentals and Basic Application Deployment

Topics

1. What is a container
2. VM vs container
3. Docker Engine architecture
4. Installing Docker
5. Basic commands: pull, run, ps, stop, rm, logs, exec, images, rmi
6. Running NGINX / Python / Node containers
7. Debugging containers

Troubleshooting

1. Container not starting
2. Port conflicts
3. Image pull errors

SESSION 2 — Docker Images, Dockerfile, Volumes, Networking and CI/CD

Docker Topics

1. Dockerfile instructions: FROM, RUN, COPY, WORKDIR, EXPOSE, CMD, ENTRYPOINT
2. Building custom images
3. Image optimization and multi-stage builds
4. Tagging and pushing to Docker Hub
5. .dockerignore
6. Volumes: named volumes and bind mounts
7. Real-world volume usage (MySQL persistence, NGINX bind mount)
8. Docker networks: bridge, host, none
9. Custom networks and multi-container communication
10. Reverse proxy basics
11. Resource limits
12. Cleaning unused images and containers

CI/CD

1. What CI/CD means
2. Typical stages: build → test → scan → Docker build → push → deploy
3. Overview of Jenkins, GitHub Actions, GitLab CI
4. How CI/CD interacts with Docker and Kubernetes

Troubleshooting

1. Volume not attaching
2. Containers unable to reach each other
3. Reverse proxy routing issues

KUBERNETES CORE AND INTERMEDIATE TOPICS

SESSION 3 — Kubernetes Architecture, Kubectl, Pods, Labels and Selectors

Topics

1. Why Kubernetes is needed
2. Master and worker components
3. API server, controller manager, scheduler, kubelet, kube-proxy, etcd
4. kubeconfig and namespaces
5. Kubectl commands: get, describe, apply, delete, logs, exec, port-forward
6. Pods, pod YAML structure, pod lifecycle
7. Multi-container pods and initContainers
8. Labels and selectors in pods, services, deployments

Troubleshooting

1. CrashLoopBackOff
2. ImagePullBackOff
3. Selector mismatch issues

SESSION 4 — ReplicaSets, Deployments, Services, ConfigMaps, Secrets, Storage and Helm

Main Kubernetes Topics

1. ReplicaSets and desired state
2. Deployments: rolling updates, rollbacks, revision history
3. Services: ClusterIP, NodePort, LoadBalancer
4. DNS and service discovery
5. ConfigMaps and Secrets (env and volume-based)
6. Storage: emptyDir, hostPath, PersistentVolumes, PersistentVolumeClaims
7. StorageClasses and dynamic provisioning

Helm

1. What Helm is and why it is used
2. Charts, templates and values files
3. How Helm simplifies deployments
4. Differences between Helm and kubectl apply
5. Example of a Helm-based install

Troubleshooting

1. PVC stuck in Pending
2. DNS/service routing problems
3. ConfigMap/Secret misconfigurations

ADVANCED KUBERNETES, NETWORKING, SECURITY AND MONITORING

SESSION 5 — Ingress, Probes, Resource Management, Scheduling, Taints and Tolerations

Topics

1. Ingress basics
2. Path-based and host-based routing
3. NGINX Ingress Controller
4. Probes: liveness, readiness, startup
5. Resource requests and limits, QoS classes, OOMKilled
6. Scheduling: nodeSelector, affinity, anti-affinity
7. Pod affinity and anti-affinity
8. Taints and tolerations

Troubleshooting

1. 404 and 503 errors
2. Probes causing restarts
3. Pods not scheduling on any node
4. Taints preventing workload placement

SESSION 6 — RBAC, Network Policies, Autoscaling, Logging and Prometheus/Grafana + Final Troubleshooting Lab

Main Kubernetes Topics

1. RBAC: service accounts, roles, rolebindings, clusterroles
2. Network policies: allow/deny traffic
3. Horizontal Pod Autoscaler using CPU metrics
4. Vertical Pod Autoscaler (concept)
5. Basic Kubernetes logging: kubectl logs, node logs, sidecar logging pattern

Prometheus/Grafana

1. Why monitoring is required
2. What Prometheus does (metrics collection, pull model, exporters)
3. What Grafana does (dashboards and visualization)
4. High-level idea of PromQL and alerts
5. How clusters are monitored in production environments

Final Troubleshooting Lab

1. Pod Pending
2. Node NotReady
3. DNS failures
4. ImagePullBackOff
5. OOMKilled
6. Ingress routing issues
7. NetworkPolicy blocking traffic
8. Storage attach failures