On-prem Kubernetes training for teams changing their application stack

We offer private, instructor-led training for application and infrastructure engineers who need to adopt Kubernetes as part of an on-prem application-stack change.

Your team knows the application's requirements and current infrastructure. Workload deployment and cluster availability need separate explanations, especially when the destination has multiple control-plane nodes and shared services.

LearnKube connects those layers through a representative application. Your engineers will examine deployment, network access, storage, and recovery while identifying which platform responsibilities the team owns.

Discuss your team's training

Learning in practice

Hands-on learning and the skills engineers take back to work.

Preview: course-wide figures are not yet available.

Hands-on learning
60%
Of instruction time spent on labs and challenges.
Troubleshooting confidence
86%
Of respondents report greater confidence diagnosing Kubernetes problems.
Relevant to your work
92%
Of respondents say the course addressed their engineering responsibilities.
Skills put into practice
95%
Of respondents applied their new skills at work within 90 days.

Connect application changes to platform ownership

Deploy a suitable application by defining images, workload resources, and configuration, so engineers can explain how the new stack runs on Kubernetes.
Preserve recoverable behavior by separating workload replicas, placement, and persistent data from control-plane availability, so each failure path has an appropriate response.
Diagnose failures across layers by inspecting controllers, Pod events, network paths, and storage, so the team can identify whether the problem belongs to the application or platform.
Assign shared responsibilities by documenting application, cluster, and infrastructure ownership, so the multi-control-plane environment has a practical operating model.

Application resilience and control-plane resilience are separate

Kubernetes controllers work to match declared workload state, while the control plane coordinates cluster operations. A high-availability topology addresses control-plane and etcd failures, but does not automatically make an application resilient. Teams adopting an on-prem stack must also define replica placement, traffic behavior, and data recovery for the workloads they plan to run.

Several control-plane nodes do not automatically make the application highly available. I want the team to examine workload replicas, placement, and data recovery separately before it treats the platform as ready for shared use.
— Daniele Polencic, LearnKube founder and Kubernetes instructor

Current task or requirement	New concept or decision	Practice
Run the application stack	Images and workload controllers	Deploy a representative service
Maintain control-plane availability	API and etcd topology	Review a component failure
Keep application traffic available	Replicas, probes, and placement	Inspect a failed replica
Recover application state	Persistent storage and recovery	Verify data after replacement

How we approach this adoption

We propose a workshop around the application changes and the Kubernetes responsibilities your team needs to take on. The comparison begins with the intended on-prem architecture rather than assume an existing source orchestrator.

The exercises connect application behavior to cluster components and infrastructure services. They make high availability, permissions, and recovery concrete without treating a running control plane as proof that every workload is ready.

A recommended four-day workshop for on-prem application adoption

This proposed agenda establishes a shared foundation for application and infrastructure engineers. It gives each group a clear view of the resources and failure paths it will support.

Day 1

Images, workloads, and controlled releases

We connect container packaging to Pods, Deployments, and Services. You will examine probes, labels, rolling updates, and rollback through the release of a representative application.

Hands-on exercises

Deploy a service with configuration separate from its image.
Introduce an unready release and inspect the effect on traffic and rollout progress.

Day 2

Templates and multi-control-plane architecture

You will use Helm and compare Kustomize for repeatable deployment resources. We explain API servers, etcd, controllers, and kubelets, including their roles in the chosen high-availability topology.

Hands-on exercises

Prepare application configuration that identifies its infrastructure dependencies.
Compare an application-replica failure with a control-plane-component failure in the lab.

Day 3

Traffic, isolation, and placement

We trace DNS, Services, ingress, and external dependencies through the selected on-prem network. You will discuss network policies, service mesh use cases, affinity, taints, and placement across nodes.

Hands-on exercises

Diagnose an application that is running but not reachable through its intended route.
Inspect a placement rule that prevents a replacement Pod from starting.

Day 4

State, scaling, authentication, and permissions

You will examine secrets, persistent storage, and recovery requirements alongside autoscaling metrics. We distinguish workload demand from infrastructure capacity and review authentication and RBAC for both teams.

Hands-on exercises

Replace a workload instance and verify access to its durable data.
Diagnose a resource or permission constraint and identify the team responsible for the correction.

Your application-stack changes, on-prem architecture, and ownership boundaries can shape the agenda. Get in touch to tailor the workshop to your on-prem Kubernetes adoption.

Challenge the assumption that redundancy exists at every layer

When an engineer points to multiple control-plane nodes as proof of application availability, the instructor can inspect the workload's replicas and storage. A targeted failure shows which component the current design actually protects.

Asked what he liked most about the course, Jim answered:

The interaction with the instructor and labs.
— Jim, Consultant at F5.

Start with the application and intended cluster responsibilities

Tell us what the application stack must do, how the on-prem cluster will operate, and who will support each layer. We will recommend a course focus for those responsibilities.

Discuss your team's training