Level 6: Advanced Platform Engineering

Service mesh, GitOps, operators, policy engines, secrets management. The tools that turn a cluster into a production platform.

Concepts

service_mesh, gitops, k8s_operators, policy_engines, secrets_management, multi_tenancy, api_gateways, platform_engineering

Failure Patterns You Should Be Able to Resolve

All patterns from Levels 1-5, plus: - FP-016: Service mesh sidecar injection failures - FP-017: GitOps drift and sync loop failures - FP-018: Policy engine blocking legitimate workloads - FP-019: Secret rotation failures and expired tokens - FP-020: Operator reconciliation loops

Commands You Should Be Fluent With

All commands from Levels 1-5, plus: - istioctl analyze, istioctl proxy-status, istioctl proxy-config (Service Mesh) - argocd app sync, argocd app diff, argocd app get (GitOps) - kubectl get crd, kubectl describe crd, operator logs (Operators) - kubectl get clusterpolicy, kyverno test (Policy Engines) - vault status, vault token lookup, vault kv get (Secrets)

Assets to Complete

Service Mesh

• training/library/topics/service-mesh/primer.md
• training/library/drills/service_mesh_drills.md
• training/library/skillchecks/service-mesh.skillcheck.md
• training/library/interview-scenarios/15-service-mesh-503s.md

GitOps

• training/library/topics/gitops/primer.md
• training/library/drills/gitops_argocd_drills.md
• training/library/skillchecks/gitops.skillcheck.md
• training/library/interview-scenarios/16-gitops-drift-detected.md

Secrets Management

• training/library/topics/secrets-management/primer.md
• training/library/drills/secrets_management_drills.md
• training/library/skillchecks/secrets-management.skillcheck.md
• training/library/interview-scenarios/13-secret-leaked-to-git.md
• training/library/interview-scenarios/19-vault-token-expired.md

Operators & Policy Engines

• training/library/topics/k8s-ecosystem/primer.md
• training/library/drills/k8s_operators_drills.md
• training/library/topics/policy-engines/primer.md
• training/library/drills/policy_engine_drills.md
• training/library/interview-scenarios/18-kyverno-blocking-deploys.md

Platform Engineering

• training/library/topics/platform-engineering/primer.md
• training/library/topics/multi-tenancy/primer.md
• training/library/topics/api-gateways/primer.md

Review (flashcards)

• training/interactive/knowledge/data/cards/gitops.tsv
• training/interactive/knowledge/data/cards/service-mesh.tsv
• training/interactive/knowledge/data/cards/secrets-management.tsv

Pages that link here

• API Gateways & Ingress - Primer
• ArgoCD & GitOps - Primer
• GitOps & ArgoCD Drills
• GitOps (ArgoCD) - Skill Check
• Kubernetes Ecosystem - Primer
• Kubernetes Operators & CRDs Drills
• Platform Engineering Patterns - Primer
• Policy Engine Drills
• Policy Engines (OPA/Kyverno) - Primer
• Primer
• Scenario: 100% 503 Errors After Mesh Rollout
• Scenario: GitOps Drift Causing Outage
• Scenario: Policy Engine Blocking All Deployments
• Scenario: Secret Leaked to Git
• Scenario: Vault Tokens Expired Across All Services