In the past few weeks, I’ve been powering through refreshing the Geek Cookbook’s Kubernetes Edition, sitting the CKS exam (which I forgot I booked on Black Friday last year!), and scrounging around for Black Friday / Cyber Monday deals! In the process I stumbled across Digital Ocean’s Kubernetes Challenge (which is a slam-dunk if you use the Geek Cookbook!)
Geek Cookbook, Kubernetes Edition 
The Kubernetes section of the Geek Cookbook was embarrassingly out-of-date, with comments from as far back as 2019 about content which was “coming soon” 
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I knuckled down over the past few weeks and refreshed the whole section, starting from whether to go managed or bare-metal, to how to deploy/build a cluster in either case, and how to use my opinionated FluxCD GitOps deployment strategy to start rolling out the necessary supporting infrastructure for certificates, DNS, load balancing, secrets, storage, etc.
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Kubernetes Certifications / Training 
As it happens, on Black Friday 2020, I bought the discounted Linux Foundation Certified Kubernetes Security Specialist training/certification, which I promptly forgot about until I realized last week that it expired 2 days later!
I figured I’d take a swing at the exam anyway, and quickly crammed on the curriculum items I’d not used much before. To my mild surprise, I managed a passing grade, so I’m now a SAP+CKA+CKAD+CKS 
I wouldn’t necessarily recommend the last-minute-cramming approach though - the bundle offered for Black Friday does actually include a high-quality training course, which should prepare you for the exam and teach you the concepts you need to know.
If you’re interested in any of these certifications, there’s currently a 50%-off deal running for Cyber Monday.
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Digital Ocean Kubernetes Slam Dunk 
While scouring for Cyber Monday details, I stumbled across Digital Ocean’s Kubernetes Challenge, which may be of particular interest to you, if you’re thinking about getting into Kubernetes…
Why a “slam dunk”?
- You get free “cloud credit” to create a managed Kubernetes cluster on Digital Ocean. This means you can follow the Geek Cookbook’s Kubernetes guide for Digital Ocean, and experiment/learn without paying anything.
- Just for participating, you’ll get:
- $150 to donate to your project of choice in Open Collective
- $100 gift card to be used at the DigitalOcean Swag Store
- $50 gift card to be used at the CNCF Swag Store
- At least one the challenges are directly covered in the Cookbook already (based on the Kubernetes Edition revision I just finished), so you could work your way through the cookbook, blog about it, and claim your prize!
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That’s it for now, geeks - as always, swing over to Discord to say hi!
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