TL;DR This is a great book, and even if you have been working with Kubernetes and are comfortable with it, I still highly recommend you pick up a copy. I am confident you will learn great things.

This is a book I’ve been looking forward to for months. This year I’ve been reading through a lot of technical books (in short, I’m always reading every day with few exceptions). One of the things I really wanted to do “away from the computer” was to continue the quest for learning my trade and craft. A few weeks ago, Kubernetes Up & Running was released. A little bit more than $30 (currently when this post was written) and a couple of days later, I received it in the mail and was hanging on to every word that these three talented authors (Kelsey Hightower, Brendan Burns, and Joe Beda) had written. Here are a few thoughts on why I wanted to take a few minutes to write this review…

The Technical Content

All three of these authors played an extremely significant role of the inception and development of Kubernetes… And the content reflects this. I’ve read quite a few technical books, and almost none of them are as effective sharing this amount of knowledge in less than 180 pages. No matter what your experience with Kubernetes is (absolutely new, you’ve never worked with it at all… to using it daily and what you feel is a high comfort level) I really think you’ll get something out of this book. Of course, for the former group, you’ll learn a ton.

Length

This is something that really astounded me. Coming in at less than 180 pages, my gut instinct was that this would be a high-level overview of k8s at best. Wow was I wrong. Virtually each page offered great information. There wasn’t any unnecessarily drawn out topics, and the important parts were explained and taught extremely effectively. And the other thing that I think is usually missed with a multi-author book is that there’s usually a very obvious delineation when one author stops and another one starts. I’m being honest here… I have no idea what chapters Kelsey, Brendan, or Joe wrote… or even where they switched off. Because of that, it flowed. From page one until the last page. It just flowed. I got this book exactly 7 days ago, and I was able to thoroughly read it in a few days. In fact, because of the length and awesome content, I’m reading it again to go through it with a finer-tooth comb. I can’t say enough about how enjoyable this book was to read. I looked forward to opening it up every day and learning from the experts.

Approach

It’s no doubt that Kubernetes is complex software (understandably so). But with the breadth that was covered, it all fit together really nicely. Each chapter lead into the next. The learning was natural. I didn’t feel the slightest need to skip forward or go back at any point in the book. Again… in my experience, that’s uncommon with technical books.

Sample Application

This is another one that really stood out for me. Usually I just shrug off and don’t pay much mind to the sample application in technical books. This was different for me. The containerized sample application, kuard , was not only a good experience to poke around k8s with but it was actually developed to explain many Kubernetes facets further and to really see it all happen in action. For the first time, I actually used the sample application throughout the entirety of the book. It was a delightful and informative tool for learning.

In summary, I highly recommend this book. I can’t see how anybody would be disappointed with it. And if you’re ready to tackle Kubernetes then this is required reading.

On to the next printed technical adventure!