Building labs.iximiuz.com - a place to help you learn Containers and Kubernetes the fun way π
Ivan on the Server Side
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Hello friends! It's time for my traditional monthly roundup of all things Linux, Containers, Kubernetes, and Server-Side craft π§ Before we get started, I want you to know that this newsletter's previous issue (dispatched mid-May) was delivered to only about 1/5th of my usual email audience due to an unfortunate DNS misconfiguration. The good news is that you can still find it and all previous issues on newsletter.iximiuz.com. Also, if you reply to this email, it'd help to restore the domain's reputation π What I was working onIn May, I finally put the development of iximiuz Labs on pause and concentrated on delivering content π β Computer Networking Basics For Developers, DevOps, and Platform EngineersI revamped and extended half a dozen of my older blog posts to create a course I wish existed when I was starting my software engineering career. It's a heavily illustrated introduction to L2-L3 networking with bite-sized sections and tens of hands-on exercises. Do recommend checking it out before you start learning Docker or Kubernetes networking! β
Do you want to master the server-side craft faster? Learning-by-doing is one of the best ways!
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Does your company have a learning and development budget? Then this expense most likely can be reimbursed. β An Alternative Introduction to Dagger: Understanding the Core ConceptsThis course is still in the works, but I just finished the second lesson, and it should be valuable on its own. Dagger has been on my radar for years as a fascinating piece of technology. However, my earlier attempts to start practicing it ended unsuccessfully due to various (at the time) rough UX edges. But the recently added Dagger Functions have finally made it useful for me, and I cannot stop enjoying writing my automation scripts in Go and running them in containers. If you want to start writing Dagger Functions to automate your development workflow too, and/or are curious about the implementation details, check this lesson out: βWriting Your First Dagger Function and Digging Into Its Runtimeβ And if you want to learn what Dagger is and why you might want to use it, the first lesson should help you with that (by the way, I fully rewrote it since the original publication a couple of weeks ago π). β Docker Scout: Remediating CVEs in a Container ImageβThe first guest challenge on the platform π Many thanks to Felipe Cruz of Docker for making it happen!
β How-To: Kubernetes Automation Development in GoRecorded a new video and compiled a collection of resources to help you get started with development programs that talk to Kubernetes API. β Keeping iximiuz Labs playgrounds up to date πTraditionally, upgraded all 24 DevOps playgrounds:
You can try them out:
How the platform is doingMay was the best/second-best (depending on the metric) month for iximiuz Labs since its release slightly more than a year ago. During this year, almost 10,000 users registered on the platform, and 45,000 microVMs were fired up. I'm enjoying working on it, and the growth is promising, but I'm still doing it in my free time and at my own expense. Here is what running the platform currently costs me:
Total: ~$600/mo I'm currently at $900 MRR with Gumroad and Patreon combined, and occasional sales of the lifetime access make it closer to $1,500/mo (but there is no steady pattern for the latter yet). This makes my "profit" from iximiuz Labs something like $300-900 a month, which already covers a day or two of work πͺ Will I reach the escape velocity this year? It would mean so much more content and new features! π If you find iximiuz Labs or my other work helpful, the best way to support me is to get iximiuz Labs Premium, either a subscription or a lifetime deal. This will mean really a lot to me, but you will also get access to more powerful playgrounds, premium challenges, and all future premium content & features. What I was readingπ¬ Debugging Distroless Images with Kubectl Debug and CDebug - A great demo by Adrian Mouat showing the limitations of βDebugging Distroless Images with kubectl and cdebug - a short and sweet post by Adrian Mouat extending the ideas from the previous video. βShrink images & debug your Docker & Kubernetes with MinToolkit (aka DockerSlim) - continuing the topic of debugging containers, Kyle Quest demos some true container wizardry on Bret Fisherβs show, including using a specialized AI assistant to guide you through the process of using βRecent Docker BuildKit Features Youβre Missing Out On - A helpful read by Martin Heinz on some less-known features of Wrapping upThat's it for May. It was a fruitful month, but it also laid a solid foundation for further content production - a few tasty things are already in the works! πͺ Happy learning! Cheers Ivan P.S. A bit of an unusual shout-out, but I finally started learning Dutch, and I cannot recommend highly enough my teacher (and his learning platform)! It's super fun to run into someone as passionate about his edu work as I am. And nope, I'm not getting a discount for this π β |
Ivan Velichko
Building labs.iximiuz.com - a place to help you learn Containers and Kubernetes the fun way π
Hello π It's this time of the month again! My traditional roundup of all things Linux, Containers, Kubernetes, and Server Side, delivered straight into your inbox π¬ What I was working on October was very productive for me - I shipped no major iximiuz Labs features (it's always hard to resist the temptation!) and instead dedicated all my available time to content work. The main focus was on Container Images. It's the subject of the first module of my "panoramic" Docker course, and it is almost...
Hey there, Iβve just finished putting together everything I know about Node.js container images and figured you might find the write-up useful. If youβre working with Node.js in Docker, chances are youβve been hit by the dilemma of which base image to use. Do you go for the default node:latest, the slimmer node:22-slim, or something super minimal like a distroless image? What about Bitnamiβs alternative β how does it stack up? Before you jump headfirst into your next build, you might want to...
Hello π Ivan's here with a slightly delayed September roundup of all things Linux, Containers, Kubernetes, and Server Side π§ What I was working on This month, I worked on an assorted set of topics. Skill Paths First off, the skill paths! I finally finished the underlying machinery, and now iximiuz Labs supports a new type of content - short roadmaps that you can use to develop or improve a specific skill: how to debug distroless containers, how to copy images from one repository to another,...