Book Review: Cracking the Kubernetes Interview

If you are preparing for Kubernetes interviews or want to move beyond memorising YAML snippets and actually understand how Kubernetes works, Cracking the Kubernetes Interview is a solid choice. Written by Viktor Vedmich and Alexander Dovnar, the book focuses on expert tips, best practices, and real-world insights that help you approach Kubernetes technical interviews with confidence while building a strong foundation you can use in real projects.

This book is clearly written for people who want to use Kubernetes with confidence. That includes software developers running services on Kubernetes, DevOps and SRE engineers managing clusters, and even ML engineers deploying training or serving workloads. It doesn’t assume you already know everything, but it also doesn’t treat you like a beginner who needs hand-holding.

The book starts with a clean and simple introduction to containers and Kubernetes. What I really liked is how it explains what is happening behind the scenes. Instead of just listing concepts, it helps you understand why things work the way they do. The core Kubernetes components are explained clearly, with good examples that make the concepts stick.

The networking and security chapters stood out for me. Networking is one of those areas people struggle with during interviews, and this book does a good job breaking it down. The security section, especially around best practices and RBAC, is practical and interview-ready. You can tell the authors have real-world experience here.

CI/CD and GitOps are covered in a very practical way. These chapters connect Kubernetes with how teams actually ship software today. The examples are clear, realistic, and easy to relate to real projects, not just interview questions.

Monitoring is another strong chapter. It is well structured and focuses on best practices rather than tool overload. You get a clear idea of what to monitor, why it matters, and how it fits into day-to-day operations.

The best part of the book, in my opinion, is the troubleshooting chapter. This is where the book really shines. It gives you a real feel for managing Kubernetes in production. The scenarios, the thought process, and even the interview stories from the authors’ own experience make this chapter both useful and enjoyable to read. This is exactly the kind of knowledge interviewers look for but most books skip.

Overall, this is not just an interview-cracking book. It’s a practical Kubernetes guide that also happens to prepare you very well for interviews.

Thanks to Preet and Packt for this book.

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