The Complete Practical Guide from Containers to Production

Read before you buy: the PDF here is a free sample — the first 20 pages of the 488-page book (payments, sales and reviews on this demo site are sample data). Get the full e-book at thenexbooks on Gumroad.

Ship containers with confidence — from your laptop to production Kubernetes.

Most developers learn Docker and Kubernetes in fragments: a Dockerfile copied from a blog, YAML from a colleague, a Helm chart nobody understands. The result is slow builds, bloated and insecure images, fragile deployments, and late-night incidents.

This is the complete, practical path from your first container to a production platform. You will understand how containers really work, build small and secure images, develop productively with Compose, and run, scale, secure, and operate real applications on Kubernetes.

✔ 488 pages · 28 chapters + 4 appendices

✔ How containers work: namespaces, cgroups, layers, OCI, containerd

✔ Fast, small, secure Dockerfiles with multi-stage builds and BuildKit

✔ Docker Compose, dev containers, registries, image security, and CI/CD pipelines

✔ Kubernetes from the ground up: Pods, Deployments, Services, Gateway API, config, storage

✔ Autoscaling, zero-downtime rollouts, Helm, Kustomize, GitOps (Argo CD / Flux), observability

✔ RBAC, Pod Security, NetworkPolicies, supply chain security, managed cloud clusters, cost, and troubleshooting

✔ 2 end-to-end case studies + cheat sheets, manifest reference, and a production checklist

✔ FREE PREVIEW — 20 sample pages: 14 in the image gallery above (including the full table of contents) + 6 more at the bottom of this description

— TABLE OF CONTENTS —

PART I · CONTAINER FOUNDATIONS

Ch 1 · Why Containers: From "Works on My Machine" to Cloud Native

Ch 2 · How Containers Work: Namespaces, cgroups, Images, and the OCI

Ch 3 · Getting Started with Docker: Install, Run, and Inspect

Ch 4 · Writing Dockerfiles: Layers, Caching, and Best Practices

Ch 5 · Multi-Stage Builds and Small, Secure Images

Ch 6 · Docker Networking and Storage

PART II · DOCKER IN DEVELOPMENT AND DELIVERY

Ch 7 · Docker Compose for Multi-Service Applications

Ch 8 · Local Development Workflows: Hot Reload, Dev Containers, and Debugging

Ch 9 · Registries, Tagging, and Versioning Images

Ch 10 · Container Security Fundamentals

Ch 11 · CI/CD for Containers: Building, Testing, and Publishing Images

PART III · KUBERNETES FUNDAMENTALS

Ch 12 · Kubernetes Architecture: Control Plane, Nodes, and the API

Ch 13 · Getting Started: Local Clusters and kubectl

Ch 14 · Pods, ReplicaSets, and Deployments

Ch 15 · Services, Ingress, and the Gateway API

Ch 16 · Configuration: ConfigMaps, Secrets, and Environment

Ch 17 · Storage and Stateful Workloads: PersistentVolumes and StatefulSets

Ch 18 · Jobs, CronJobs, DaemonSets, and Workload Patterns

PART IV · OPERATING KUBERNETES

Ch 19 · Resource Management and Autoscaling

Ch 20 · Health Checks, Rollouts, and Reliability

Ch 21 · Packaging with Helm and Kustomize

Ch 22 · GitOps with Argo CD and Flux

Ch 23 · Observability: Logs, Metrics, and Traces

PART V · SECURITY AND PRODUCTION

Ch 24 · Kubernetes Security: RBAC, Pod Security, Network Policies, and Supply Chain

Ch 25 · Managed Kubernetes in the Cloud and Cost Optimization

Ch 26 · Troubleshooting Containers and Kubernetes

PART VI · CASE STUDIES

Ch 27 · Containerizing and Deploying Orbit Store

Ch 28 · A Production Platform: CI/CD, GitOps, Observability, and Scale

APPENDICES

A · Docker and kubectl Cheat Sheet · B · Manifest Reference · C · Production Checklist · D · Glossary

— WHO IT IS FOR —

Application developers, backend and full-stack engineers, DevOps and platform engineers, and students preparing for cloud-native roles. You only need basic Linux shell, Git, and one programming language.

— FORMAT —

PDF (A4), 488 pages, English, with a clickable table of contents and PDF bookmarks. 1st Edition, 2026.

— MORE SAMPLE PAGES (pages 15–20 of the free preview) —

Book details