I received this book about a year ago, but I finally made time to read it, so here is my review. Since it is a reference-style book, I picked and chose only the topics I was less familiar with.

The Japanese version of this article is available here.

I had never systematically studied Kubernetes before and had been getting by with fragmented knowledge, so reading this book really helped fill in the gaps. In particular, I learned a lot about (Cron)Jobs, Service APIs, PVCs, security-related topics, and logging, which were areas I was less familiar with.

I think this book is well suited for people who already have some knowledge of Kubernetes and want to fill in gaps or use it as a reference. It explains the necessary information in a systematic way. Each topic is covered with an explanation followed by examples with hands-on exercises, so it is not just a dry enumeration of facts and is easy to absorb. The target version is 1.18, which is somewhat dated, but most of the core concepts of Kubernetes have not changed, so there is still plenty to learn.

On the other hand, this is probably not the right book for someone with no prior knowledge of Kubernetes. It is a bit too detailed and might be overwhelming. I personally started with “Shikumi ga Wakaru Kubernetes” (しくみがわかるKubernetes)1, and I think a book like that, where you learn step by step while actually running things, is better as a first read.

Also, as stated in the preface, this book focuses on elements that application developers are likely to use — in other words, elements required for the CKAD certification. Therefore, the coverage of Kubernetes architecture is limited to an overview of individual components. For example, if you want to implement a custom operator or contribute to Kubernetes itself, you will need additional resources.

Regardless of your role, this book systematically covers the essential knowledge that anyone working with Kubernetes should have, and it lives up to its reputation as an excellent book.

  1. I chose it simply because it was the only Kubernetes book available at my university library, but it is a good book too. The only slight downside is that it uses Azure instead of AWS or GCP. ↩︎