About This Course

How did this course come to be?

When I finished my last course, “Advanced Kubernetes Techniques: Monitoring, Logging, Auto-Scaling - Learn Interactively”, I wanted to take a break from writing for a month or two. I thought that would clear my mind and help me decide which subject to tackle next. Those days were horrible. I could not make up my mind. So much cool and useful tech is emerging and being adopted, and I was never as undecided as I was in those weeks. What should my next step be?

I could explore serverless. That’s definitely useful, and it just might be considered the next big thing. Or I could dive into Istio. It is probably the biggest and the most important project sitting on top of Kubernetes. Or I could tackle some smaller subjects. Kaniko is the missing link in continuous delivery. Building containers might be the only thing we still do on the host level, and Kaniko allows us to move that process inside containers. How about security scanning? It is one of the things that is mandatory in most organizations. Then there is Skaffold, Prow, Knative, and quite a few other tools that are becoming stable and very useful.

And then it struck me. Jenkins X does all this and much more. I intentionally did not write about it earlier because it was too green and always changing. It was far from stable, but the situation today is different. While the project still evolves at a rapid pace, and there are quite a few things left to do and polish, Jenkins X is being adopted by many. It has proved its usefulness. Its community is rising; its popularity is enormous, and it is one of the Kubernetes darlings.

So, the decision was made. This course will be dedicated to Jenkins X.

As with other courses, the idea here is to go deeply into the subject. While the first few chapters might (intentionally) seem very basic, we’ll explore Jenkins X and many related tools in-depth, and we’ll try to see the bigger picture.

• What is it? What does it do, and how does it do it?
• How does it affect our processes?
• How can we combine it with the things we already have, and which tools should be changed?
• Is it only about continuous delivery?
• Does it affect local development?
• Does it change how we operate Kubernetes?

What matters is that I want you to be successful, and I hope that this course will help you on your career path.

🔍 If you explore jenkins-x.io, you might notice some similarities between the content there and in this course. What you read here is not a copy of what’s there. Instead, I decided to contribute part of the chapters to the community.

How to reach out?

Eventually, you might get stuck and need help, or you might want to write a review or comment on the course’s content. Please join the DevOps20 Slack workspace and post your thoughts, ask questions, or participate in a discussion. If you prefer a more one-on-one conversation, you can use Slack to send me a private message or send an email to viktor@farcic.com. All the courses I have written are very dear to me, and I want you to have a good experience reading them. Part of that experience is the option to reach out to me. Don’t be shy.

Please note that this one, just as the previous courses, is self-published. I believe that having no intermediaries between the writer and the reader is the best way to go. It allows me to write faster, update the course more frequently, and have more direct communication with you. Your feedback is part of the process. No matter whether you purchased the course while only a few or all chapters were written, the idea is that it will never be truly finished. As time passes, it will require updates so that it is aligned with the change in technology or processes. When possible, I will try to keep it up to date and release updates whenever that makes sense. Eventually, things might change so much that updates are not a good option anymore, and that will be a sign that a whole new course is required. I will keep writing as long as I continue getting your support.

---

Now, let’s get started!