Kubernetes Workshop Series

Join Chase Christensen (Kubestronaut, Kubeflow Maintainer, and AMLC Member) for a multi-session, hands-on series designed to take you from Kubernetes novice to Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD).

We’re bridging the gap between cloud-native infrastructure and machine learning. Come for the certification, stay for the Spark workloads and model serving!

Series Highlights

K8s Fundamentals: Pods, Jobs, and Deployments.
Data at Scale: Running Spark workloads natively on K8s.
MLOps: Deploying and serving trained ML models.
Advanced Logic: Controllers and Operators.
Exam Prep: Strategies to ace the CKAD.

🍕Bonus: Pizza and beverages provided!

Part 1 Recap (May 27, 2026)

In our first session, Chase Christensen walked us through the foundational building blocks of cloud-native infrastructure, framing them within the context of the Certified Kubernetes Application Developer (CKAD) path. We discussed:

Intro to CKAD & Kubernetes: Understanding cluster components, API resources, and YAML syntax.
Core Objects: Hands-on creation and verification of basic Pods, Deployments, and temporary run-once Jobs.
Local Clustering: Configuring local Docker Desktop clusters with Kubernetes enabled, and verifying connection using client-side CLI tool commands (kubectl version --client).

View Slide Deck GitHub Repository

Scaling the Kubernetes Mountain Presentation

Check-in materials and AMLC stickers

Requirements

Hardware & OS

•OS: macOS or Linux (No Windows, please).
•RAM: 8GB is plenty.

Cloud Backup: If our workloads outpace your laptop, we’ll provide the necessary cloud infrastructure.

💡 Workshop Part 2 Labs Note: Workloads and labs for the upcoming workshops can be performed using a trial GCP account or any active GCP environment.

Software Setup

Please have these ready before the session:

•Docker Desktop: Install and ensure "Enable Kubernetes" is checked in settings.
•kubectl: Verify via kubectl version --client in your terminal.
•IDE: Your choice (VS Code, Vim, Cursor, etc.). Just ensure you can edit YAML comfortably.

Recommended Familiarity

•Terminal: Basic navigation (cd, ls) and CLI usage.
•YAML: Understanding indentation and structure.
•Containers: A high-level grasp of Docker images and runtimes.

Community Library

Thanks to our partnership with O'Reilly, the AMLC has plenty of books to share. Feel free to stop by, take a book for yourself, leave a book you are done with for someone else, or just browse. The goal is collective communication and collective learning!

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