Kubernetes Hands-On Course

8-Session Lab Guide for Intermediate Developers

Cluster: this repo is configured for kind (kind create cluster --name k8s-labs). All commands, port mappings, and image-load instructions use kind defaults.

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The Big Project: Incident Tracker

Every session adds a new Kubernetes concept to one evolving real application: a full-stack Incident Tracking system.

Layer	Technology	Image
Backend API	Node.js + Express	incident-api:v1 / v2
Frontend UI	React + Vite (served by nginx)	incident-frontend:v1
Database	PostgreSQL 15	postgres:15-alpine (public)

API endpoints:

Method	Path	Description
GET	/health	Version + storage mode
GET	/incidents	List all incidents
POST	/incidents	Create { title, severity }

Storage auto-detection: when POSTGRES_PASSWORD is set the backend switches to PostgreSQL automatically; otherwise it runs with an in-memory array. Same image, no rebuild needed between sessions.

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Quick Start — Build the Images

Run this once before Session 1 (or after recreating your cluster).

# 1. Create the kind cluster
kind create cluster --name k8s-labs
kubectl cluster-info --context kind-k8s-labs

# 2. Build images and load them into the cluster
chmod +x app/build.sh
./app/build.sh kind

# 3. Verify the images are available
docker exec kind-k8s-labs-control-plane crictl images | grep incident

Images produced and loaded:

Image	First used in
incident-api:v1	Session 1