11 Best Book For Kubernetes To Automate Your Projects

The world of technology changes rapidly, which creates the need for automation. So, the ever-evolving realm of automation has become a must-have skill set for many enterprises’ projects. And Kubernetes is at the forefront of such projects.

Kubernetes is becoming one of the most popular tools for automating tasks in various organizations. It helps developers quickly and efficiently deploy applications with less manual effort and easily scale applications up or down when needed. But to make the best use of it, you need a comprehensive guidebook that covers all aspects of this powerful technology. Here are some of the best books for learning how to use Kubernetes to automate your projects:

Kubernetes Best Practice:

This practical guide, penned by four professionals with extensive experience in distributed systems, enterprise application development, and open source, takes readers on a comprehensive journey of building applications with Kubernetes, the renowned container orchestration system.

The book’s insights are derived from the experiences of companies that have successfully deployed Kubernetes in real-world production environments, and many of the methodologies discussed are supported by concrete code examples.

The book is particularly suitable for those who have a basic understanding of Kubernetes and are interested in learning about its best practices. It provides readers with all the necessary information to build their best app with Kubernetes on the first attempt.

Key areas covered in this guide include:

• Setting up and developing applications in Kubernetes.
• Learning patterns for monitoring, securing systems, and managing upgrades, rollouts, and rollbacks.
• Understanding Kubernetes networking policies and the role of service mesh.
• Integrating services and legacy applications and developing higher-level platforms on top of Kubernetes.
• Running machine learning workloads in Kubernetes.

This book is a valuable resource for anyone looking to leverage Kubernetes to its full potential in application development.

Kubernetes On AWS Book Review:

“Kubernetes on AWS” is an enlightening guide that empowers you to deploy a production-ready Kubernetes cluster on the AWS platform with ease. This book harnesses the power of Kubernetes – one of the fastest-growing platforms for production-based container orchestration – to manage and update your applications.

The book begins by introducing Kubernetes’ powerful abstractions, Pods, and Services, which simplify managing container deployments. It then guides readers through the process of setting up a production-ready Kubernetes cluster on AWS. Along the way, it imparts techniques needed to successfully deploy and manage applications.

By the end of the book, readers will gain hands-on experience with Kubernetes on Amazon Web Services. They will learn tips on deploying and managing applications, securing their cluster and applications, and ensuring system reliability and resilience to failure.

Readers will also:

• Learn how to provision a production-ready Kubernetes cluster on AWS.
• Discover strategies for troubleshooting their cluster and finding help with issues.
• Explore the best ways to monitor their cluster and its applications.
• Learn how to integrate their cluster with the tools provided by the AWS platform for enhanced performance.
• Understand how to architect their cluster for high availability.

The book is targeted toward cloud engineers, cloud solution providers, sysadmins, site reliability engineers, and developers interested in DevOps. While no prior knowledge of Kubernetes is required, some experience with Linux and Docker containers could be beneficial.

In essence, “Kubernetes on AWS” is a comprehensive guide for anyone looking to leverage the power of Kubernetes on AWS.

The Kubernetes Book By Nigel Poulton

“The Kubernetes Book” by Nigel Poulton dives into the world of containerized applications and their management at scale. Containers, while revolutionizing application development, deployment, and management, bring their unique set of challenges. This is where Kubernetes, a tool designed to orchestrate and manage containerized applications, becomes pivotal.

Kubernetes abstracts the complexities of various underlying cloud platforms, making it irrelevant whether you’re deploying on Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, or your own on-premises data center. With Kubernetes, you can develop applications on your laptop, deploy them to your chosen cloud platform, and even migrate between different cloud platforms or to your private cloud at your on-premises data center.

The audio version of “The Kubernetes Book” begins from the basics, covering everything one needs to master Kubernetes. It also includes two sections dedicated to threat-modeling Kubernetes and real-world security, providing readers with an understanding of how to secure their Kubernetes deployments.

In this book, readers will learn about:

• The architecture of Kubernetes clusters
• How to build Kubernetes clusters
• How to deploy and manage applications on Kubernetes
• How to secure Kubernetes
• The meaning of terms like cloud-native, microservices, desired state, containerized, and more…

Overall, “The Kubernetes Book” is a must-read for anyone seeking to grasp Kubernetes and its application in the modern cloud-centric world.

Hacking Kubernetes Book Review:

Andrew Martin and Michael Hausenblas ‘ “Hacking Kubernetes: Threat-Driven Analysis and Defense” explores the security risks associated with running Kubernetes in production. This comprehensive guide provides readers with a thorough overview of the threats, attacks, and vulnerabilities they need to be aware of, along with suitable strategies for mitigating them.

The book begins by discussing the architecture of each Kubernetes component, their potential default settings, and a review of high-profile attacks and historical Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs). The authors share best-practice configurations to help readers harden their clusters against possible angles of attack.

The book commences with a basic Kubernetes installation with built-in defaults. It then presents an abstract threat model of a distributed system running arbitrary workloads, followed by a detailed assessment of each component necessary for a secure Kubernetes system.

Key topics covered include:

• Understanding the vulnerabilities of your Kubernetes system with threat modeling techniques.
• Focusing on pods, exploring configurations, potential attacks, and defenses.
• Securing your cluster and workload traffic.
• Defining and enforcing policy with Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), Open Policy Agent (OPA), and Kyverno.
• Investigating sandboxing and isolation techniques.
• Learning how to detect and mitigate supply chain attacks.
• Examining filesystems, volumes, and the handling of sensitive information at rest.
• Discovering potential issues when running multitenant workloads in a cluster.
• Learning the steps to take if a breach occurs despite having controls in place.

In summary, “Securing Kubernetes: A Threat-Based Guide” is an essential resource for anyone seeking to secure their Kubernetes workloads effectively. It provides insightful knowledge and practical strategies for hardening Kubernetes systems against various threats.

Mastering Kubernetes Book Review:

Gigi Sayfan’s masterpiece, “Mastering Kubernetes,” unravels the complexities of Kubernetes, ensuring that your clusters are always available, scalable, and updated. Readers will learn about new features such as autoscaling, rolling updates, resource quotas, and cluster size. The book also imparts skills for designing and deploying large clusters on various cloud platforms.

Kubernetes is an open-source system used to automate the deployment, scaling, and management of containerized applications. It becomes essential when managing more than just a few containers or when automated management of containers is required.

“Mastering Kubernetes” primarily focuses on the advanced management of Kubernetes clusters, addressing challenges that arise when implementing container orchestration in production. The book provides an overview of Kubernetes design principles and shares best practices in security, high availability, and cluster federation.

Readers will learn how to run complex, stateful microservices on Kubernetes, including advanced features like horizontal pod autoscaling, rolling updates, resource quotas, and persistent storage backends. The book uses real-world use cases to explain network configuration options and offers guidelines on setting up, operating, and troubleshooting various Kubernetes networking plugins. It concludes with a discussion on custom resource development and its utilization in automation and maintenance workflows.

Upon completion of this book, readers will have advanced from intermediate to expert level in Kubernetes.

Key takeaways include:

• Architecting a robust Kubernetes cluster for long-term operation
• Understanding the benefits of running Kubernetes on GCE, AWS, Azure, and bare metal
• Learning about the identity model of Kubernetes and options for cluster federation
• Monitoring and troubleshooting Kubernetes clusters and maintaining high availability
• Creating and configuring custom Kubernetes resources and using third-party resources in automation workflows
• Mastering the art of running complex stateful applications in a container environment
• Delivering applications as standard packages

The author, Gigi Sayfan, is the chief system architect of VRVIU, a stealth virtual reality start-up. With over 20 years of software development experience across diverse domains, Sayfan brings a wealth of knowledge to this guide, making it an invaluable resource for anyone looking to master Kubernetes.

Container Security Book Review:

“Securing Container-Based Applications” is a practical guide that delves into the world of container-based systems. With many organizations now running applications in cloud-native environments using containers and orchestration for scalability and resilience, it becomes imperative to ensure the security of these deployments.

This book, penned by Liz Rice, Chief Open Source Officer at Isovalent, serves as a valuable resource for developers, operators, and security professionals, helping them assess security risks and devise appropriate solutions.

Rice explores the building blocks commonly used in container-based systems, explaining how they are constructed in Linux. Readers gain an understanding of what happens when deploying containers and learn how to evaluate potential security risks that could impact their deployments. The book is particularly suitable for those who run container applications with tools like Kubectl or Docker and use Linux command-line tools such as PS and Grep.

Key areas covered in this guide include:

• Exploring attack vectors that affect container deployments.
• Diving deep into the Linux constructs that underpin containers.
• Examining measures for hardening containers against potential threats.
• Understanding how misconfigurations can compromise container isolation.
• Learning best practices for building secure container images.
• Identifying container images that have known software vulnerabilities.
• Leveraging secure connections between containers for enhanced security.
• Using security tooling to prevent attacks on your deployments.

In summary, “Securing Container-Based Applications” is an insightful resource that offers practical strategies for securing container-based applications, making it a must-read for anyone seeking to enhance the security of their container deployments.

Kubernetes Security Book Review:

“Learn Kubernetes Security” serves as a comprehensive guide to securing containerized applications, ensuring robust deployments and protection against cyberattacks. This practical book is a valuable resource for security consultants, cloud administrators, system administrators, and DevOps engineers interested in safeguarding their container deployments.

The book, which explores a variety of Kubernetes components that aid in preventing cyberattacks, begins with an introduction to the Kubernetes architecture and networking model. The reader then delves into the Kubernetes threat model and learns how to secure clusters. Throughout the book, various security aspects are covered, including authentication, authorization, image scanning, and resource monitoring.

The reader learns about securing cluster components such as the kube-Episerver, CoreDNS, and Kubelet, as well as pods, including hardening image, security context, and PodSecurityPolicy. Hands-on examples provide insights into using open-source tools like Anchore, Prometheus, OPA, and Falco to protect deployments.

Key takeaways from the book include:

• Understanding the basics of Kubernetes architecture and networking.
• Gaining insights into different security integrations provided by the Kubernetes platform.
• Exploring Kubernetes’ threat modeling and security domains.
• Discovering various security configurations through practical examples.
• Learning how to use and deploy open-source tools to protect deployments.
• Uncovering techniques to mitigate or prevent known Kubernetes hacks.

By the end of this book, readers will have a solid understanding of container security and will be equipped to protect their clusters from cyberattacks and mitigate cybersecurity threats. To make the most of this book, a basic understanding of cloud computing and containerization is necessary. In essence, “Learn Kubernetes Security” is a must-read for anyone looking to secure their Kubernetes clusters and cloud-based deployments.

Kubernetes And Docker_An Enterprise Guide Book Review:

This masterpiece guidebook goes beyond the basics of Kubernetes clusters. It is an excellent resource for DevOps professionals, developers, and system administrators interested in enhancing their skills in DevOps, containerization, and advanced Kubernetes cluster deployments.

The book commences with an introduction to Docker and Kubernetes fundamentals, including a review of basic Kubernetes objects. It then delves into the core functionalities of containerization, teaching readers how to create ephemeral multinode clusters using Kind. As the book progresses, it provides insights into cluster architecture, Kubernetes cluster deployment, and cluster management.

Further, the book explains how to integrate containers with cloud platforms and tools, such as MetalLB, external DNS, OpenID Connect (OIDC), Pod Security Policies (PSPs), Open Policy Agent (OPA), Falco, and Valero. Readers will also learn how to deploy an entire platform to the cloud using continuous integration and continuous delivery (CI/CD).

By the end of this book, readers will have learned how to:

• Create a multinode Kubernetes cluster using Kind.
• Implement Ingress, MetalLB, and ExternalDNS.
• Configure a cluster OIDC using impersonation.
• Map enterprise authorization to Kubernetes.
• Secure clusters using PSPs and OPA.
• Enhance auditing using Falco and EFK.
• Back up workloads for disaster recovery and cluster migration.
• Deploy to a platform using Tekton, GitLab, and ArgoCD.

In summary, “Advanced Kubernetes Techniques: Effective Enterprise Integration and Management with Kubernetes” offers a deep dive into the creation of development clusters for testing applications and Kubernetes components. It also equips readers with knowledge on securing and auditing a cluster by implementing various open-source solutions, including OpenUnison, OPA, Falco, Kibana, and Valero. While prior experience with Docker and Kubernetes is recommended, the book includes a Kubernetes boot camp for those new to the topic or need a refresher.

Team Topologies Book Review:

“Team Topologies” by Matthew Skelton and his co-authors is a practical, step-by-step guide for building effective software teams to deliver value continuously and sustainably. The book presents an adaptive model for organizational design and team interaction based on four fundamental types of teams and three patterns of team interaction.

The unique approach of “Team Topologies” treats teams as the fundamental means of delivery. It emphasizes that team structures and communication pathways should evolve in line with technological and organizational maturity. This perspective positions the book as a significant advancement in organizational design for software development.

In the book, Skelton and Pais, both seasoned IT consultants, share insights into successful team patterns and interactions. They guide readers on how to choose and evolve the right team patterns for their organization. The aim is to maintain the software’s health and optimize value streams.

One of the book’s major contributions is its well-defined way for teams to interact and interrelate. This approach helps make the resulting software architecture clearer and more sustainable. Furthermore, it turns inter-team problems into valuable signals for the self-steering organization.

In short, “Team Topologies” is a must-read for those seeking to build the best team organization for their specific goals, culture, and needs. It provides a roadmap to creating an adaptable and efficient team structure that can evolve with the organization’s growth and technological advancements.

Chaos Engineering Book Review:

Casey Rosenthal and Nora Jones’ “Chaos Engineering: System Resiliency in Practice” is an excellent guidebook for anyone looking to learn the fundamentals of chaos engineering. The book begins by introducing readers to the concepts of system resiliency and chaos engineering, including its history and basic principles.

As companies increasingly move towards these technologies, the complexity of systems increases. While this complexity cannot be eliminated, Chaos Engineering offers a way to discover vulnerabilities and prevent outages before they impact customers.

The book is authored by two prominent figures in the field, Casey Rosenthal and Nora Jones, who pioneered the discipline during their tenure at Netflix. In this book, they delve into the what, how, and why of Chaos Engineering, facilitating a broader conversation with practitioners across various industries. Several chapters are penned by contributing authors to offer a wider perspective across verticals within and beyond the software industry.

Key topics covered in the book include:

• How Chaos Engineering enables organizations to navigate complexity.
• A methodology to avoid failures within applications, networks, and infrastructure.
• Moving from theory to practice through real-world stories from industry experts at Google, Microsoft, Slack, LinkedIn, and others.
• Establishing a framework for thinking about complexity within software systems.
• Designing a Chaos Engineering program around game days and moving towards highly targeted, automated experiments.
• Understanding how to design continuous collaborative chaos experiments.

However, it is an insightful resource that provides practical strategies for managing complex systems while optimizing to meet business goals. It’s an essential read for any engineer looking to navigate the complexities of modern distributed systems.

Kubernetes Patterns Book Review:

Biligin Ibryam and Roland Hub’s “Kubernetes Patterns: Reusable Elements for Designing Cloud-Native Applications” is an excellent job for developers and IT professionals looking to learn about how to design effective Kubernetes applications.

The authors, Ibryam and Hub, have decades of experience in the field of cloud computing and have provided a comprehensive look at patterns that are applicable to almost any type of application running on Kubernetes.

The book starts with an introduction to Kubernetes and its core concepts, such as controllers, services, storage, and networking. Designed to help developers adapt to the evolution of microservices and containers. This shift in modern architecture utilizes new primitives, requiring different practices that many developers, tech leads, and architects may not be familiar with.

The book offers common reusable elements, patterns, principles, and practices for designing and implementing cloud-native applications on Kubernetes. Each pattern discussed includes a problem description and a proposed solution with specific references to Kubernetes. Many of these patterns are also supported by concrete code examples, making the content accessible and practical.

The book is particularly beneficial for developers already familiar with basic Kubernetes concepts and keen on learning common cloud-native patterns.

It explores the following pattern categories:

• Foundational patterns: These cover the core principles and practices for building container-based cloud-native applications.
• Behavioral patterns: These delve into finer-grained concepts for managing various types of container and platform interactions.
• Structural patterns: These provide guidance on organizing containers within a pod, which is the basic unit of the Kubernetes platform.
• Configuration patterns: These offer insights into handling application configurations in Kubernetes.
• Advanced patterns: These cover more sophisticated topics like extending the platform with operators.

The Essence of Designing and Implementing Cloud-Native Applications” is an essential resource for anyone looking to understand and implement cloud-native application design on Kubernetes. It provides valuable insights into the fundamental principles, advanced techniques, and best practices for building robust, scalable, and efficient cloud-native applications.

Conclusion

Overall, “Team Topologies,” “Chaos Engineering: System Resiliency In Practice,” and “Kubernetes Patterns: Reusable Elements For Designing Cloud-Native Applications” are essential resources for any team or organization looking to build the best structure and strategy for their particular needs.

Whether it’s improving collaboration between teams, driving system resiliency, or designing cloud-native applications on Kubernetes, these books offer invaluable insights into the best practices and techniques. With the right knowledge and tools, teams can create efficient systems that are able to weather any storm.

There are also many other resources available for learning more about modern architecture, such as case studies, white papers, podcasts, videos, etc. Investing in these resources is essential for teams and organizations looking to stay ahead of the curve in order to remain competitive. By leveraging all available resources, teams can create efficient solutions that are able to tackle any challenge.

Additionally, staying up-to-date with trends and developments can help teams identify potential opportunities and take advantage of them before their competitors do. This will allow them to unlock greater value and increase their market share.

The various books discussed here are just a starting point for those looking to develop better systems and strategies for their organizations. With the right frameworks, teams can make informed decisions that allow them to remain competitive in an ever-changing world of technology.

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