Phase 1 — Foundation (Days 1–30)

Week 1-2: Linux & Shell Scripting

Goal: Be comfortable navigating, automating, and troubleshooting Linux systems from the command line.

Topics:

• Filesystem hierarchy: /etc, /var, /proc, /sys, /tmp
• File permissions, ownership, ACLs (chmod, chown, setfacl)
• Process management: ps, top, htop, kill, systemctl, journalctl
• Networking basics: ip, ss, netstat, curl, wget, dig, nslookup, traceroute
• Package management: apt/yum/dnf
• Users, groups, sudo, SSH key management
• Cron jobs and scheduling
• Bash scripting: variables, loops, conditionals, functions, error handling (set -euo pipefail)
• Text processing: grep, awk, sed, cut, sort, uniq, jq
• Log files: tail -f, grep patterns, /var/log/syslog, journalctl -u

Hands-on Labs:

• Write a Bash script that monitors disk usage and emails/Slacks an alert above 80%
• Write a log-rotation script using logrotate config
• Automate SSH key distribution to 3 VMs using a Bash loop
• Parse a sample application log file with awk/jq to extract error rates

Resources:

• man pages and tldr CLI tool (install it)
• Linux Command Line by William Shotts (free online)
• overthewire.org/wargames/bandit — gamified Linux practice

Week 3: Docker Hands-On

Goal: Build, run, debug, and publish container images confidently.

Topics:

• Container vs VM mental model
• Docker architecture: daemon, client, image layers, registry
• Dockerfile best practices: layer caching, multi-stage builds, .dockerignore, non-root users
• docker build, docker run, docker exec, docker logs, docker inspect
• Volumes and bind mounts
• Networking: bridge, host, overlay, port mapping
• Docker Compose: multi-service local stacks
• Image scanning: docker scout / trivy
• Registry: Docker Hub, ECR, GCR, Artifact Registry

Hands-on Labs:

• Containerize a Node.js or Python Flask app with a multi-stage Dockerfile
• Build a Docker Compose stack: app + Postgres + Redis
• Scan the image with trivy; fix at least one HIGH vulnerability
• Push to a private ECR or GCR registry
• Use docker stats and docker top to observe resource usage live

Resources:

• Docker official docs (docs.docker.com)
• Docker Deep Dive by Nigel Poulton (short, practical)

Week 4: Kubernetes Fundamentals

Goal: Deploy and manage workloads on a local Kubernetes cluster.

Topics:

• K8s architecture: control plane (API server, etcd, scheduler, controller-manager), nodes, kubelet, kube-proxy
• Core objects: Pod, ReplicaSet, Deployment, Service (ClusterIP/NodePort/LoadBalancer), ConfigMap, Secret, Namespace
• kubectl essentials: get, describe, apply, delete, exec, logs, port-forward, rollout
• YAML manifest authoring
• Labels, selectors, annotations
• Resource requests and limits
• Liveness and readiness probes
• kubectl explain — your best friend

Hands-on Labs:

• Stand up a local cluster with kind or minikube
• Deploy the sample app (from Week 3) as a Deployment + Service
• Scale replicas up/down; observe pod scheduling
• Trigger a rolling update; observe rollout status
• Deliberately break a probe; watch pod restart behavior

Resources:

• Kubernetes in Action by Marko Luksa (the K8s bible for practitioners)
• killer.sh / killercoda.com — browser-based K8s labs