If you’re looking to get started with Kubernetes this year, there’s a lot of great free resources available for you and I’m going to focus on three excellent ones from VMware. The first is KubeAcademy.

KubeAcademy is a free, product-agnostic Kubernetes and cloud native technology education program built by experts at VMware. The courses are predominately for beginners but also include intermediate and advanced topics in Kubernetes such as building apps and images, networking, and observability:

The best part about KubeAcademy is that the concepts are easily broken down and concisely explained. Even if you’re not familiar with containers, there’s a Containers 101 course. With nearly 20 hours of content available, this free Kubernetes resource has something for everyone! Throughout the courses you’ll get hands-on experience with upstream Kubernetes but there’s also more VMware-specific Kubernetes hands-on content available with the next resource: VMware Hands-on Labs.

VMware productizes upstream Kubernetes in the VMware Tanzu portfolio that was announced at VMworld 2019. The Tanzu portfolio includes solutions to help organizations build, run, and manage modern applications so Tanzu encompasses many technologies built around the Kubernetes ecosystem. Since then, there’s been a lot of great labs that have been created.

The VMware Hands-on Labs below are focused on the three pillars of Tanzu: Build, Run, and Manage.

Build

• Currently no HOLs for Build

Run

• HOL-2113-01-SDC – vSphere with Tanzu
• HOL-2133-01-MAP – VMware Tanzu Kubernetes Grid (TKG)
• HOL-2187-03-ISM VMware Cloud on AWS with Tanzu- Lightning Lab (Simulation)

Manage

• HOL-2132-01-MAP – VMware Tanzu Mission Control
• HOL-2132-92-ISM – VMware Tanzu Service Mesh Simulation

VMware Fling: Tanzu Kuberentes Grid (TKG) Demo Appliance

If you have a home lab, this is probably the best and easiest way to get up and running with Tanzu Kubernetes: The TKG demo appliance! William Lab created a virtual appliance that deploys a fully functional TKG Cluster with minimal resource requirements. The workshop guide walks you through deploying the cluster and some demos to help you get the feel for TKG.

• Pre-requisite Guide (includes download instructions)
• Workshop Guide

I hope that you find these free resources helpful this year as you learn upstream Kubernetes and Tanzu Kubernetes in 2021!