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Kubernetes Mastery: Hands-On Lessons From A Docker Captain (Udemy.com)

Learn the key Kubernetes features and plugins while practicing DevOps workflows, from a container expert

Created by: Bret Fisher

Last updated August 2026

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What you will learn

  • Learn Kubernetes and cluster tools from an award-winning Docker Captain!
  • Lead your team into the future with the latest Kubernetes & container skills!
  • Know the right ways to use Kubernetes for proper DevOps workflows
  • Understand production K8s topics like rolling updates, healthchecks, and failure recovery
  • Know when to use different types of app configuration like args, envs, and ConfigMaps
  • Make Kubernetes YAML manifests and deploy using infrastructure-as-code methods

How it compares

Against the other 219 rated Udemy courses in DevOps on CourseDuck:

  • Rating4.6 out of 5higher than 78% of them
  • Reviews4,713#43 of 220 by number of reviews
  • Length8.1 hourslonger than 66% of them
  • Last updatedAugust 2026more recently than 91% of them

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Course Description

This course recommends downloading Docker Desktop and other free virtual machine and container tools. If you are a Udemy Business user, please check with your employer before downloading software.

2022 Update: Ready for Apple Silicon (M1 arm64) and Raspberry Pi's!
Taught by an award-winning Docker Captain and Kubernetes expert,
this Course is the result of a collaboration between Bret Fisher, creator of the #1 Docker & Kubernetes course on Udemy, and Jérôme Petazzoni who is a full-time Kubernetes instructor, as well as one of the original Docker Inc DevOps Engineers! We designed the course to take your Kubernetes skills from first-time user to using K8s in production.

Updates are a thing! You can count on it. Kubernetes is a huge topic and constantly evolving. As a result, this course will get updated and evolve with it.

Just starting out with Kubernetes? Perfect. This course starts out assuming you're new to container orchestration.

[five stars] "Because Bret knows, lives, breaths and loves his technology stack. The passion and belief always comes through in all of his courses which is why I will always recommend his work."  -- Steven Hunt, Udemy Student

Already a Docker Mastery student and want to know what's different between the two courses? This course assumes you know Docker and dives deeper into Kubernetes and the community of tools around it. Unlike Docker Mastery, which starts with container 101 and takes you through a lot of tools like local development setups, docker-compose, registry, Docker Hub, Swarm basics, Kubernetes basics, and general Docker best practices... this course starts with Kubernetes 101 and has you learning and practicing each feature and workflow you'll need for running your own Kubernetes clusters, and like all my courses, it focuses on how to use those features with a DevOps mindset and workflow.

BONUS: This course comes with Slack Chat, Discord Chat and monthly YouTube Live Q&As with me!

"...Bret is amazing. You can tell he knows exactly what he is talking about and enjoys helping others. I have never seen someone so involved with his user base as Bret. ...I would seriously buy any course the Bret puts out because I have no doubts that it will be excellent."  -- David Olson, Udemy Course Student

Why should you learn from me? Why trust me to teach you the best ways to use Kubernetes?   (Hi, I'm Bret, please allow me to talk about myself for a sec):

  • I'm A Practitioner. Welcome to the real world: I've got 20 years of sysadmin and developer experience, over 30 certifications, and have been exclusively focused on DevOps and the container ecosystem for my consulting clients and my own companies since Docker's early days. Learn from someone who's helped run thousands of containers across dozens of projects and organizations.

  • I'm An Educator. Learn from someone who knows how to make a syllabus: I want to help you. People say I'm good at it. For the last few years, I've trained thousands of people on using Docker & Kubernetes in workshops, conferences, and meetups. See me teach at events like DockerCon, O'Reilly Velocity, GOTO Conf, and Linux Open Source Summit.

  • I Lead Communities. Also, I'm a Docker Captain, meaning that Docker Inc. thinks I know a thing or two about containers and that I do well in sharing it with others. In the real-world: I help run two local meetups in our fabulous tech community in Norfolk/Virginia Beach USA. I help online: usually in Slack, Discord, and Twitter, where I learn from and help others.


"This guy is out of this world. I love his patience and carefulness he puts in all of his lessons." -- Evan Baird, Udemy Student

Giving Back: a portion of my profit on this course will be donated to supporting open source and protecting our freedoms online! This course is only made possible by the amazing people creating open source. I'm standing on the shoulders of (open source) giants! Donations will be split between my favorite charities like Electronic Frontier Foundation and Free Software Foundation. Look them up. They're awesome!

This is a living course and will be updated as Kubernetes features change.

This course is designed to be fast at getting you started but also to get you deep into the "why" of things. Simply the fastest and best way to learn the latest container skills. Look at the scope of topics in the Session and see the breadth of skills you will learn.

Also included is a private Slack Chat group with 40,000+ students and a Discord server with 12,000+ members for getting help with this course and continuing your Docker and DevOps learning with help from myself and other students.

"I am really loving your approach to training so far. Concepts are really simplified and easy to understand. Thank you."  -- Yemisi Omoijo, Udemy Student

Some of the many cool things you'll do in this course:

  • Deploy a microservice app using both CLI and YAML

  • Investigate running apps using CLI, logs, and events

  • Test out different local Kubernetes installs like Docker Desktop, microK8s, and minikube

  • Use Stern to view multiple container logs at once

  • Try different load balancer types with Kubernetes Services

  • Troubleshoot container and network performance

  • Create custom labels for controlling load balancer connections

  • Use the new Server Dry Run to test changes with the API

  • Recover from a failed update, and rollback updates to previous versions

  • Test different healthcheck probe types

  • Use various app config options with built-in Kubernetes features

  • Quickly patch YAML with a single command

  • Split up and deploy YAML from git repos using DevOps practices

  • Deploy the Kubernetes Dashboard web GUI securely

  • And so much more...

 

After taking this course, you'll be able to:

  • Know when to use Kubernetes for solving real-world problems

  • Step through the proper decisions to make when creating healthchecks

  • Understand how to test healthchecks to ensure they don't create problems

  • Know when to use different types of app configuration like args, envs, ConfigMaps, and more

  • Design a ConfigMap with the Downward API for more flexible deployments

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Instructor Details

Bret Fisher

Hey I'm Bret. Thanks for learning about me. I'm a freelance DevOps and Docker consultant, trainer, speaker, and Open Source volunteer working from Virginia Beach, USA. I've helped over 350,000 people learn Docker and DevOps tools and techniques.

I've been a cloud and datacenter ops/sysadmin for more than 25 years. For years I've been exclusive to containers and I help teams Dockerize their apps and systems, and improve their speed of deployment, resiliency, metrics, and awareness. All that DevOps-y stuff.

I'm also a Docker Captain and CNCF Ambassador. I speak at conferences, run a popular Discord server, do weekly live events on YouTube, and love helping others. I'm obsessed with containerizing any app I see, and I'll likely talk your ear off about it next time we meet.

I sometimes develop in Node.js, Bash, Go, and general web, usually for open source. 
When not doing cloud native DevOps stuff, I'm watching sci-fi, playing games (tabletop and xbox), and traveling with my wife and dog.

Please check out my courses and join me with thousands of others who are learning the latest DevOps tools!

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Reviews

4.6

4,713 ratings on Udemy

Select a bar to show only those reviews.Select the bar again to show every rating.

By Florentin Fix on 6/3/2025

Ein guter Einstieg in Kubernetes. Allerdings macht sich an vielen Stellen bemerkbar, dass die Videos inzwischen veraltet sind. Dank vieler Hinweise und Einblendungen kommt man zwar weiter, trotzdem trübt es das Erlebnis etwas ein. Ich hätte mir außerdem gewünscht, dass ausführlicher auf das Erstellen der YAML-Dateien eingegangen wird. Es macht einen Unterschied, ob man den Prozess, wie man zu einer solchen Datei kommt, erlebt oder ob man einfach eine fertige Datei vorgesetzt bekommt mit dem Hinweis, sich die Dokumentation durchzulesen. Alles in allem ist es aber ein guter, empfehlenswerter Kurs.

By Mohamed Berrada on 5/29/2025

For beginners, the course helps get comfortable with the k8s. We're talking concepts, examples, exercices. Don't be lazy and do the exercices ! They really help ! Overall, it's mainly around deploying app to a k8s cluster and understanding how it all connects together. It's a complex technology with so much to uncover that ... you shouldn't expect it'll cover everything. But like i said, it'll help you get comfortable enough to work in a k8s environment and perform some troubleshooting. Finally, like he said : we're not here to debug some app performance, we're here to do devops !

By Arie van Duin on 10/29/2024

At the end I changed my rating upward from a 2. I gave it a 2 because old videos and slides compared to newer release of Docker cq K8s which confused me. The reason for up warding is mainly because Brett took the remark and changed parts by the above comment. Further there was a lot of information in the course, maybe too much I don't know, also I have to read to the additional lessons which are only slides. I also understand it's difficult to get any logical order in something where different parts are connected and influence each other for teaching those.

By Jonathan Cheng on 10/13/2021

Bret Fisher always an impressive teacher :). Not exactly the course I expected, but still a nice course, at least for beginners. Maybe some stuff are still to be added later thou... P.S.: I already took some courses out there with Kubernetes included, but for "Mastery" I thought I would get an in-depth experience with K8s' ecosystem, like using cloud provided cluster (GKE as I 'kinda' successfully configured on my own), integrating with SSL (cert-manager?), Rancher (and some considerations), Longhorn, Grafana+Prometheus, Istio, Harbor, etc. With that kind of stuff, I would have certainly given this course 5 stars

By Prasanth Ravi on 2/8/2021

Loved the course, the concepts that were included have given me a solid foundation for exploring Kubernetes on my own. The explanations are simple and easy to understand. I do wish that the course had spent a bit more time on the different yaml resource specs. Some of the other needed concepts such as RBAC, ServiceAccounts etc are missing atm, with a promise to deliver them later. I hope to come back when those lectures are available. That would indeed make this course the most comprehensive one on k8s and truly deserving a 5 star rating.

By Pratiek Sanklecha on 2/2/2021

Amazing Course.... In the making. (Unfinished Course) Brett has in-depth knowledge of the subject matter and he is particular that you understand the basics and internal workings well.. That creates solid foundation and gives you great confidence. -The course is well structured. -Assignment section is really well designed that helps remove any misconceptions or gaps in your learning. -All the content is updated -Instructor always is concerned about your objective of using your skills in production (Very Very Important) BIG CON: Many important topics are not yet published & So you can't really do stuff after taking this course at this point in time. I would request Bret to get this done ASAP and Also add topics like Authentication, Authorisation to your TO-DO List. Topics Not Yet Published: Persistent storage and volumes Custom resources (CRD's) Operators Helm, including the new 3.0 changes Kustomize templating Recording deployment actions (and pros and cons) Central logging with ELK Prometheus monitoring Static pods Kube proxy and remote CLI mgmt with context Network policies, pod security policies And then there's more content coming that isn't yet at the end of the slides Cloud clusters Deployment options Autoscaling (VVIMP) Resource limits and sizing

By Osahon Elaiho on 1/14/2021

Bret Fisher, the Docker Captain, did a good job in demystifying everything in the world of containers and orchestration. Even though I have known this technology for almost 3 years and seen many tutorials on the subject, there is always the need to keep abreast with the changes, and no other instructor has done a better job in simplifying how to use this technology that changed the way software engineers built complex products. The knowledge gained has been helpful in a lot of implementations and stakeholder engagement since I completed one of his courses (Docker Mastery) last year on the same subject. If you are an Engineering Lead, Architect or DevOps Engineer, or Just want to build your knowledge and eloquence on the subject, You need to take a look at these courses, they are explosive. Thank You Bret!!!

By Alexei Novakov on 11/14/2020

Concise, easy to understand with just enough of depth.

By Michael Mller on 11/14/2020

Very good and easy to understand explanations.
Many good examples on which you can build yourself.

By Stefan Warringa on 11/14/2020

A really hands-on course and Bert is a great instructor. Lots of advice on practical scenarios and trade-offs.
However, as a preparation for CKAD it is not complete. Topics like stateful sets and multi-container pod design aren't covered. Also course hasn't been updated in 9 months.. Is it abandoned?

By Xavier Langlois on 11/7/2020

Very clear! Thanx Capt'N

By Garima Kumari on 11/7/2020

i had no idea about kubernetes, with this course i'm able to understand and work on kubernetes in my office project.

Showing 12 of 240 reviews

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Overall Score : 92 / 100