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The Kubernetes Book

Nigel Poulton

This 2026 edition of the best-selling Kubernetes book is fully updated for the latest versions of Kubernetes and the latest industry trends. You won't find a better and more up-to-date book on Kubernetes. Hand-crafted over the past 8 years by best-selling author Nigel Poulton. This book is a masterpiece.

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About

About

About the Book

The Kubernetes Book — Fully Updated for 2026

By Nigel Poulton — author of the first ever Kubernetes book. His books have sold hundreds of thousands of copies and his training courses have taught millions of engineers worldwide.

Kubernetes is how modern infrastructure runs. This book is how people learn it.

What's new in this 2026 edition

  • Fully updated for the latest Kubernetes releases
  • New Gateway API chapter — weighted traffic splitting and cross-namespace routing
  • Refreshed examples throughout

What you'll learn

Everything from Kubernetes architecture and the control plane, to scheduling, networking, RBAC, scaling, rolling updates, ingress, and self-healing apps. You'll also learn how to set up clusters from scratch (including free options) and extend the Kubernetes API.

Who it's for

Developers building containerised or microservices-based applications. DevOps and platform engineers deploying or operating clusters. Infrastructure and IT professionals moving into cloud-native environments.

Studying for your CKA?

The Certified Kubernetes Administrator exam is one of the most sought-after certifications in cloud-native infrastructure, and this book is where thousands of candidates have started their preparation. It covers the core Kubernetes concepts and hands-on skills the exam tests, explained clearly enough that you'll actually understand them, not just memorise them.

Why readers keep coming back every year

No jargon. No padding. Fully updated every year so it's never out of date.

The only Kubernetes book you'll ever need to keep.

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About the Author

Nigel Poulton

About the authors

I’d like to thank Pushkar for his writing the security chapters. He approached me at

a KubeCon and asked if he could contribute some content on real-world security. Collaborating on content isn’t something I’ve done before, and I tried to tell him “no thanks”. However, he was keen, so we made it happen. To be clear, the technical content for the security chapters is all Pushkar’s. I just tweaked the writing style so the book has a consistent feel.

Author: Nigel Poulton (@nigelpouton)

Nigel is a techoholic who spends his life creating books, training videos, and other stuff that makes learning Kubernetes less scary. He’s the author of best-selling books on Docker and Kubernetes, as well as the most popular online training videos on the same topics. He’s also a Docker Captain. Prior to all of this, Nigel held various senior infrastructure roles at large enterprises (mainly banks).

When he’s not playing with technology, he’s dreaming about it. When he’s not dreaming about it, he’s reading and watching scifi. He wishes he lived in the future so he could explore space-time, universes, and tons of other mind-blowing stuff. He likes cars, Formula One, golf, football (soccer), and food. He has a fabulous wife and three epic children.

Contributing author: Pushkar Joglekar

Pushkar is currently working as a Security Engineer @ VMware Tanzu to help make Kubernetes secure-by-default, for all. In the last few years, he’s built multiple “secure by design” production container deployments for a Fortune 500 company and is an active contributor in the CNCF security community.

When not securing containers, he spends his time exploring neighborhood bike trails and capturing beautiful sunsets through his camera while sipping home-made masala ginger chai. He lives with his wonderful wife, who happens to be the real engineer among them.

Leanpub Podcast

Episode 178

An Interview with Nigel Poulton

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Contents

Table of Contents

About this edition

About the authors

  1. Author: Nigel Poulton
  2. Contributing author: Pushkar Joglekar

0: Preface

  1. Paperbacks, hardbacks, eBooks, audio, and translations
  2. The sample app and GitHub repo
  3. Windows users
  4. Terminology and responsible language
  5. Feedback

1: Kubernetes primer

  1. Important Kubernetes background
  2. Kubernetes: the operating system of the cloud
  3. Chapter summary

2: Kubernetes principles of operation

  1. Kubernetes from 40K feet
  2. Control plane and worker nodes
  3. Packaging apps for Kubernetes
  4. The declarative model and desired state
  5. Pods
  6. Deployments
  7. Service objects and stable networking
  8. Chapter summary

3: Getting Kubernetes

  1. Install everything with Docker Desktop
  2. Akamai Linode Kubernetes Engine (LKE)
  3. Build a multi-node Kubernetes cluster in the Akamai Cloud
  4. Configure kubectl
  5. Test your LKE cluster
  6. More about kubectl and your kubeconfig file
  7. Chapter summary

4: Working with Pods

  1. Pod theory
  2. Multi-container Pods
  3. Hands-on with Pods
  4. Clean up
  5. Chapter Summary

5: Virtual clusters with Namespaces

  1. Intro to Namespaces
  2. Namespace use cases
  3. Default Namespaces
  4. Creating and managing Namespaces
  5. Deploying objects to Namespaces
  6. Clean up
  7. Chapter Summary

6: Kubernetes Deployments

  1. Deployment theory
  2. Create a Deployment
  3. Manually scale the app
  4. Perform a rolling update
  5. Perform a rollback
  6. Clean up
  7. Chapter summary

7: Kubernetes Services

  1. Service Theory
  2. Hands-on with Services
  3. Clean up
  4. Chapter Summary

8: Gateway API

  1. Why no more Ingress
  2. How Gateway API works
  3. Hands-on with Gateway API

9: Service discovery deep dive

  1. Setting the scene
  2. The service registry
  3. Service registration
  4. Service discovery
  5. Service discovery and Namespaces
  6. Troubleshooting service discovery
  7. Clean up
  8. Chapter summary

10: Kubernetes storage

  1. The big picture
  2. Storage Providers
  3. The Container Storage Interface (CSI)
  4. The Kubernetes persistent volume subsystem
  5. Dynamic provisioning with Storage Classes
  6. Hands-on
  7. Clean up
  8. Chapter Summary

11: ConfigMaps and Secrets

  1. The big picture
  2. ConfigMap theory
  3. Hands-on with ConfigMaps
  4. Hands-on with Secrets
  5. Clean up
  6. Chapter Summary

12: StatefulSets

  1. StatefulSet theory
  2. Hands-on with StatefulSets
  3. Clean up
  4. Chapter Summary

13: API security and RBAC

  1. API security big picture
  2. Authentication
  3. Authorization (RBAC)
  4. Admission control
  5. Chapter summary

14: The Kubernetes API

  1. Kubernetes API big picture
  2. The API server
  3. The API
  4. Chapter summary

15: Threat modeling Kubernetes

  1. Threat modeling
  2. Spoofing
  3. Tampering
  4. Repudiation
  5. Information Disclosure
  6. Denial of Service
  7. Elevation of privilege
  8. Chapter summary

16: Real-world Kubernetes security

  1. Security in the software delivery pipeline
  2. Workload isolation
  3. Identity and access management (IAM)
  4. Security monitoring and auditing
  5. Real-world example
  6. Chapter summary

Terminology

What next

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