Start your first week by learning about container concepts, features, use cases, and benefits. Building on your new understanding of containers, you’ll learn what Docker does and discover why it is so popular among developers. You’ll explore Docker fundamentals, become familiar with Docker processes, and examine the technology that powers Docker. You’ll also learn how developers and organizations benefit from using Docker, as well as the challenges and limitations associated with it. Next, you’ll learn how to build a container image using a Dockerfile and create a running container from that image. You’ll become familiar with the Docker command-line interface (CLI) and explore commonly used Docker commands. In addition, you’ll gain knowledge of Docker objects, Dockerfile instructions, container image naming conventions, and how Docker uses networks, storage, and plugins. You’ll then apply this knowledge by exploring Docker architecture components in action and learning about containerization with Docker. By the end of the first week, you’ll be able to pull an image from Docker Hub, run an image as a container using Docker, build and tag an image using a Dockerfile, and push that image to a registry.

In week two, learn what container orchestration is. Then, explore how developers can use container orchestration to create and manage complex container environment development lifecycles. Kubernetes is currently the most popular container orchestration platform. You’ll examine key Kubernetes architectural components, including control plane components and controllers. Explore Kubernetes objects, and learn how specific Kubernetes objects such as Pods, ReplicaSets, and Deployments work. Then, learn how developers use the Kubernetes command line interface (CLI), or “kubectl” to manipulate objects, manage workloads in a Kubernetes cluster, and apply basic kubectl commands. You’ll be able to differentiate the benefits and drawbacks of using imperative and declarative commands. At the end of this module, you will use the kubectl CLI commands to create resources on an actual Kubernetes cluster. At the end of this week, you’ll use the Kubernetes CLI to create a Kubernetes pod, create a Kubernetes deployment, create a ReplicaSet and see Kubernetes load balancing in action.

In week three, you’ll explore ReplicaSets, autoscaling, rolling updates, ConfigMaps, Secrets, and service bindings, and learn how you can use these capabilities to manage Kubernetes applications. You’ll learn how ReplicaSets scale applications to meet increasing demand, and how autoscaling creates dynamic demand-based scaling. You’ll see how to use rolling updates to publish application updates and roll back changes without interrupting the user experience. You’ll learn how to use ConfigMaps and Secrets to provide configuration variables and sensitive information to your deployments and to keep your code clean. At the end of the week, you’ll scale and update applications deployed in Kubernetes.

In week four, you’ll learn more about the growing Kubernetes ecosystem and explore additional tools that work well with Kubernetes to support cloud-native development. You’ll gain an understanding of the similarities and differences between Red Hat ® OpenShift® and Kubernetes and see what OpenShift architecture looks like. You’ll learn about OpenShift builds and BuildConfigs, and OpenShift build strategies and triggers. You'll also discover how operators can deploy whole applications with ease. Finally, you’ll examine how the Istio service mesh manages and secures traffic and communication between an application’s services. At the end of the week, you’ll use the oc CLI to perform commands on an OpenShift cluster. And you’ll use the OpenShift build capabilities to deploy an application from source code stored in a Git repository.

For the Final Project, you will put into practice the tools and concepts learned in this course, and deploy a simple guestbook application with Docker and Kubernetes. The entire application will be deployed and managed on OpenShift.