Hands-On Labs

Self-contained exercises that run on your local k3s cluster. Each lab: a broken or incomplete system. Your job: fix it.

#	Lab	Tier	Time	Prerequisites	Auto-Grade
1	Linux Triage	Foundation	30m	Linux basics	Yes
2	Container Basics	Foundation	30m	Docker installed	Yes
3	Networking Fundamentals	Foundation	30m	Linux basics, Docker	Yes
4	Git Operations	Foundation	30m	Git installed	Yes
5	Shell Scripting	Foundation	30m	Bash basics	Yes
6	Deploy & Scale	Kubernetes Core	45m	k3s cluster, kubectl	Yes
7	Pod Debugging	Kubernetes Core	45m	k3s cluster, kubectl	Yes
8	Service Networking	Kubernetes Core	45m	k3s cluster, kubectl	Yes
9	Storage & State	Kubernetes Core	45m	k3s cluster, kubectl	Yes
10	RBAC & Security	Kubernetes Core	45m	k3s cluster, kubectl	Yes
11	Monitoring Stack	Operations	60m	k3s cluster, Helm	Yes
12	CI/CD Pipeline	Operations	60m	Docker, Git	Yes
13	Terraform IaC	Operations	60m	Terraform, Docker	Yes
14	Log Analysis	Operations	60m	k3s cluster, Helm	Yes
15	Incident Response	Operations	60m	k3s cluster	Yes
16	Chaos Engineering	Advanced	90m	k3s cluster, Helm	Yes
17	Performance Tuning	Advanced	90m	k3s cluster	Yes
18	Zero-Downtime Migration	Advanced	90m	k3s cluster, PostgreSQL	Yes
19	Multi-Cluster	Advanced	90m	2x k3s clusters	Yes
20	Platform Engineering	Advanced	90m	k3s cluster, Helm	Yes
21	Production Readiness Review	Capstone	2h	All Tier 1-3 labs	Yes
22	Incident Simulation	Capstone	2h	Incident Response lab	Yes
23	Architecture Review	Capstone	2h	All Tier 1-3 labs	Yes
24	On-Call Shift	Capstone	3h	Monitoring + Incident labs	Yes
25	Tech Lead Challenge	Capstone	3h	All prior tiers	Yes

Quick Start

1. Navigate to a lab directory
2. Run ./setup.sh to create the broken environment
3. Fix the issues using the objectives in README.md
4. Run ./grade.sh to check your work
5. Run ./teardown.sh when done

Prerequisites

• k3s cluster (for Tier 2+)
• Docker
• Basic Linux CLI knowledge

Tier Progression

Tier 1 — Foundations: Core Linux, containers, networking, git, and scripting. Start here if you are new to DevOps or want to validate fundamentals.

Tier 2 — Kubernetes Core: Deploying, debugging, networking, storage, and security on Kubernetes. Requires a running k3s cluster.

Tier 3 — Operations: Monitoring, CI/CD, infrastructure-as-code, log analysis, and incident response. Real-world operational workflows.

Tier 4 — Advanced: Chaos engineering, performance, migrations, multi-cluster, and platform engineering. Senior-level problem solving.

Tier 5 — Capstone: Multi-hour exercises combining skills from all prior tiers. Production readiness, incident simulation, architecture, on-call, and leadership.

Grading

Every lab includes a grade.sh script that checks each objective independently. The script prints pass/fail per objective and a total score. Exit code 0 means all objectives passed; exit code 1 means at least one failed.

Cleanup

Run ./teardown.sh in any lab directory to remove all resources created by that lab's setup.sh. Teardown scripts are idempotent and safe to run multiple times.