VIKHRAM S

🚀 Kubernetes for Absolute Beginners – A Friendly Guide

“When I first heard about Kubernetes, it sounded like a sci-fi robot’s name. But soon I realized it’s more like the traffic police of our applications – making sure everything runs smoothly, no matter how messy the road gets.”

Hello everyone 👋,
In this post, I’ll walk you through Kubernetes (K8s) in the simplest way possible. If you’re just starting, don’t worry – I’ll cover the what, why, and how in plain English and then show you how to set it up on Windows, Linux, and Mac.

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🌱 What is Kubernetes?

Think of Kubernetes as a system manager for your apps.

• You have applications → made of containers (like Docker containers).
• Kubernetes makes sure these containers:
  ✅ Run when they should
  ✅ Restart if they crash
  ✅ Scale up if more users come
  ✅ Spread across machines (cloud or local)

In short → Kubernetes = Container Orchestrator 🎶

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🤔 Why Learn Kubernetes?

• Almost every company deploying apps at scale uses it.
• It makes you cloud-ready.
• Great for both students and researchers who want to run AI/ML, big data, or web apps reliably.
• And honestly… it’s fun once you get the hang of it 😉

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🛠️ Installing Kubernetes Locally

We’ll use Minikube (a lightweight tool to run Kubernetes on your laptop). It sets up a local cluster where you can practice.

1️⃣ Prerequisites for All Systems

• Install Docker Desktop (or Docker Engine for Linux).
• Install kubectl → the command-line tool to talk to Kubernetes.
• Install Minikube.

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💻 For Windows

1. Install Docker Desktop for Windows.
2. Install Chocolatey (Windows package manager):

   Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; `
   [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = `
   [System.Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor 3072; `
   iex ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://chocolatey.org/install.ps1'))
   

3. Install kubectl & Minikube:

   choco install kubernetes-cli
   choco install minikube
   

4. Start Minikube:

   minikube start --driver=docker
   

🎉 You now have a working Kubernetes cluster on Windows.

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🐧 For Linux (Ubuntu/Debian example)

1. Install dependencies:

   sudo apt update
   sudo apt install -y curl apt-transport-https
   

2. Install Docker:

   sudo apt install -y docker.io
   

3. Install kubectl:

   curl -LO "https://dl.k8s.io/release/$(curl -s https://dl.k8s.io/release/stable.txt)/bin/linux/amd64/kubectl"
   chmod +x kubectl
   sudo mv kubectl /usr/local/bin/
   

4. Install Minikube:

   curl -LO https://storage.googleapis.com/minikube/releases/latest/minikube-linux-amd64
   sudo install minikube-linux-amd64 /usr/local/bin/minikube
   

5. Start Minikube:

   minikube start --driver=docker
   

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🍎 For macOS

1. Install Homebrew if not installed:

   /bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
   

2. Install Docker Desktop (or Colima for a lightweight option).
3. Install kubectl and Minikube:

   brew install kubectl
   brew install minikube
   

4. Start Minikube:

   minikube start --driver=docker
   

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🎯 Testing Your Cluster

Run:

kubectl get nodes

If you see minikube Ready, congratulations 🎉 – your first Kubernetes cluster is alive!

Deploy a simple app:

kubectl create deployment hello-k8s --image=nginx
kubectl expose deployment hello-k8s --type=NodePort --port=80
minikube service hello-k8s

You should see Nginx welcome page in your browser. Boom – you just deployed your first app with Kubernetes! 🚀

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📌 What’s Next?

• Learn Pods, Services, Deployments
• Try scaling apps:

  kubectl scale deployment hello-k8s --replicas=3
  

• Explore dashboards:

  minikube dashboard
  

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✨ Final Thoughts

Kubernetes can look intimidating at first, but once you break it down, it’s like playing Lego with containers. Start small with Minikube, deploy simple apps, and gradually explore advanced concepts like Ingress, ConfigMaps, and StatefulSets.

Stay tuned for my next blog.