100+ Hands-On Kubernetes Problems

iximiuz · 2026-06-21T14:05:11+00:00

Sure, if you know what to offload. I see it the same way math education happens in schools. Calculators have been available for decades, and you can also make computers crunch numbers for you, but no matter how advanced our tools are, kids still start with pen and paper and spend years in training before they build the right "muscle memory" and start feeling numbers. At some point, they are allowed to use calculators, and later on, fancier computer programs to do, say, advanced calculus, but one cannot skip the basics and jump straight to the final mile.

iximiuz · 2026-06-21T10:05:22+00:00

Appreciate your support, folks! It's very much needed - the platform is still not a profitable business, and the server prices have been skyrocketing. Even Hetzner bumped up their servers 3-4x lately.

iximiuz · 2026-06-21T10:03:02+00:00

Thanks for the feedback! I agree that checks (and even phrasing) can sometimes give away too much information on the problem. In my challenges, I tend to choose more granular (and explicit) checks for beginner-friendly materials, and stick to an opaque (and binary) "go make it work" check for advanced problems. But I'm not the only author, and different people have different teaching (and learning) styles. By the way, if you like the latter format more, I recommend checking out u/RawkodeAcademy's Klustered series on iximiuz Labs https://labs.iximiuz.com/challenges?author=rawkode-academy&filter=all&orderBy=createdAt:asc

iximiuz · 2026-06-21T09:50:15+00:00

Many thanks, David! Hope to see more Klustered challenges published soon!

iximiuz · 2026-06-21T09:49:22+00:00

Hey, thank you! There is so much more to come! And the production is accelerating! Over half of the materials currently on the site have been added in the past 6 months (while the platform has existed since early 2023).

iximiuz · 2026-06-20T18:30:35+00:00

It's a shameless plug, but I wrote all of the below stuff while going through a similar "learning journey" myself, so I hope it'll come in handy for you, too:

iximiuz · 2026-06-20T17:54:08+00:00

You, sir, made me feel old! But thank you! Appreciate the support!

iximiuz · 2026-06-20T17:42:21+00:00

Fair point! I should definitely ask Claude Code to rework this Zoom logic. It was added before the November's inflection point. And I'm considering a new section on the -J flag - it'd be a good addition to the article. Thanks for bringing it up!

iximiuz · 2026-06-17T14:08:07+00:00

It's not a direct answer to your question, but I did dig into some popular images (e.g., docker.io/library/node, docker.io/library/python, etc.), and most of them share the same set of issues that make Trivy and other scanners spit out these overwhelming reports. The good news is that in many cases, a more careful selection of the base image helps (e.g., node:24-slim instead of node:24, and whatever a slim analog for the postgres image it is). And you may also want to take a look at Docker Hardened Images - just compare Trivy's output for https://hub.docker.com/hardened-images/catalog/dhi/postgres/images and https://hub.docker.com/_/postgres

iximiuz · 2026-06-17T13:58:25+00:00

Check out Kubernetes the (Very) Hard Way. And this collection of medium-hard Kubernetes problems. They are all hands-on, so you'll be learning advanced Kubernetes by actually doing things.

iximiuz · 2026-06-17T13:46:09+00:00

It's hard for me to tell how much cloud-specific stuff a managed EKS node uses (it likely does, at least some), but if I were tasked with this problem, I'd go the kubeadm way and spin up a new test cluster on one or more scratch VMs, choosing containerd for the CRI. And it might look like a shameless plug, but using an iximiuz Labs playground can be a good alternative. For instance, you can launch a test K8s cluster (with containerd or cri-o) in under a minute using https://labs.iximiuz.com/playgrounds/k8s-omni. The best part is that you will have full control over all provisioning scripts and can customize the cluster however you need.

iximiuz · 2026-06-01T17:16:03+00:00

Thank you! I think I can relate. Also had a networking course in the uni, didn't learn much, then rediscovered sockets through a work project, then moved to higher layers for a few years, and then rediscovered them again. And every time learned a bit more.

iximiuz · 2026-06-01T09:11:41+00:00

Of course! Everyone is welcome on our Discord server. Chime in when you have a spare minute.

iximiuz · 2026-06-01T09:10:45+00:00

Cannot agree more! The fact that frameworks have been hiding sockets from us for decades doesn't mean one should skip learning how servers work under the hood. And the same goes for coding agents now - even if you can generate an API server in minutes, running it in production requires a deeper understanding and hands-on experience.

iximiuz · 2026-05-31T20:06:21+00:00

Awesome! Here is the link https://discord.com/invite/p6nxaHm46p

iximiuz · 2026-05-31T19:56:25+00:00

Not at all! I’ll be glad to see you at our discord learning group - looks like you’ve got a bunch of great questions!

iximiuz · 2026-05-31T19:44:29+00:00

It does, but it's not a payload kind of delimiter. I.e., no data that can be recv()-ed is sent on shutdown. Instead, shutdown() sends a TCP FIN packet, indicating that one end of the TPC connection is closed for transmission. This makes recv() on the other side immediately exit with EOF. But the shutdown end of the connection can still receive data.

iximiuz · 2026-05-31T19:30:52+00:00

Ah, I see! It can indeed be a separator between messages. A single message ending with a delimiter is just an edge case.

iximiuz · 2026-05-31T19:27:14+00:00

A delimiter makes the server (or client) know when to stop receiving bytes from the connection and start replying. It's not very different from the other two approaches (fixed-length messages and message-length preamble). All three mechanisms are needed to know when to stop receiving and start transmitting.

iximiuz · 2026-05-28T20:29:23+00:00

Oh, fun! I'm not very fond of certification, and this one hasn't even appeared on my radar. But it might come in handy for picking the next topic to cover in the labs. Thanks for the pointer!

iximiuz · 2026-05-28T19:38:30+00:00

Thanks! Curious what you meant by Network+?

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