kubestronaut

This is my working directory for completing the CNCF Kubestronaut certification package.

Sources

This is not a pretty portfolio, it's getting things done dirty.

• values are simply inline instead of boiler plated out into variable blocks
• shell failures are noted, but are not fatal

sources and inspirations include, but are not limited to:

• https://github.com/talbotfoundry/k8s-kvm
• https://github.com/boxcutter/kvm/
• https://github.com/chef/bento

Environment

created and ran on x86_64 Debian Linux.

virtual machines are x86_64 Ubuntu 24.04.1 Linux.

SSH

Vagrant is configured to copy ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub to the root user's authorized keys. The vagrant makefile target will drop ssh configuration snippets into ~/.ssh/vagrant.d/.

Host vagrant-*
    User root
    RequestTTY yes
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

Include vagrant.d/*

$ ssh vagrant-control-01 -- kubectl apply -f - < manifests/pod.yml
pod/box created

Building

make python

installs local python / pyenv runtime. ansible, etc.

make packer

builds base images and imports to vagrant.

must be explicitly ran first. not included in default build targets / dependencies.

ubuntu24.pkr.hcl: packer configuration file scripts/packer.sh: base box provision script

make vagrant

creates a 1 control node, 3 worker node k8s cluster

playbook-k8s.yml: ansible playbook for provisioning basic cluster

Certification Notes

K8s and Cloud Native Associate - KCNA

• The CNCF Landscape is very intimidating.
  • take time to become familiar with graduated projects.

k8s Administrator - CKA

• killer.sh exam simulators included are invaluable for finding weak spots
• Time and resource management.
  • Know key search terms for boilerplate in k8s official docs.
  • vimrc
    • add set si for smartindent
  • env
    • export d="--dry-run=client -o yaml"
  • spend time wisely. if a question is taking a lot of digging through docs, flag and come back to it.
    • 30% troubleshooting - quick work if you know where to look.
    • 25% arch, install, configuration
    • 20% services and networking
    • 15% workloads and scheduling - the deep magic.
    • 10% storage
  • cluster upgrade apply takes a very long time.
    • tmux and detach. flag the task, and come back after a few minutes.

k8s Application Developer - CKAD

• quite a bit of overlap from CKA.
• time management - topics are more even in weighting.
  • skip and flag time sinks

Security Associate - KCSA

Security Specialist - CKS