All Labs

Kubernetes Essentials

Get hands-on with Kubernetes using K3s — the lightweight, production-grade Kubernetes distribution by Rancher. This lab gives you a single-node Kubernetes cluster that runs comfortably on a lightweight instance.

30 min
8 steps

Learning Objectives

  • Understand Kubernetes architecture (pods, nodes)
  • Explore a single-node K3s cluster
  • Deploy applications using kubectl and YAML manifests
  • Create and manage Services (ClusterIP, NodePort)
  • Scale Deployments and perform rolling updates
  • Inspect logs, events, and cluster health

Lab Steps

1

Verify the Cluster

Verify that your K3s node is ready and the cluster is healthy.

$ kubectl get nodes -o wide && kubectl cluster-info
You should see a single node (k3s-master) with STATUS: Ready.
2

Explore Cluster Components

3

Deploy Nginx Application

4

Expose with a Service

5

Scale the Deployment

6

Rolling Update

7

Inspect Pod Logs & Events

8

Cleanup

Ready to Practice?

Enter your name and click "Start Lab" to provision a real AWS environment.

No sign-up required • Auto-terminates after 30 min