Kustomize: Add-on Training Adjustments of Kubernetes Manifests

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Course Description

Reusing Kubernetes manifests for different target environments.

Kustomize provideas means to modify existing Kubernetes manifests. This allows to adjustment of Kubernetes configurations for different target environments. Kustomize is not a template language, instead it applies extensions and patches to existing configurations.

Despite its various quirks and peculiarities, Kustomize is widely used for reusing and customizing Kubernetes configurations. This course covers how to use and configure Kustomize, as well as how to integrate it into GitOps and CI/CD workflows.

This training is an extension of the Kubernetes, Helm, or Argo CD courses.

Course Objectives

Participants will learn how to declaratively modify existing Kubernetes manifests using Kustomize. The goal is to make adjustments to specific infrastructures—such as registries and ingress hostnames—and to reuse configurations for various target environments.

Course Outline

  • Introduction to Kustomize
    • Principles and architecture of Kustomize
    • Pros and Cons of Kustomize
    • kustomize and kubectl -k
  • Project structure for Kustomize
    • Kustomizations
    • Bases
    • Overlays
  • Configuration adjustments for different target environments
    • Overlay structures and referencing the base
    • Unique identification of objects across multiple layers
    • Embedding files and security restrictions
  • Transformations
    • Adjusting names and namespaces
    • Adjusting labels and annotations
    • Adjusting images, registries, and tags
    • Adjusting the number of replicas
    • Dependencies between objects
  • Patches
    • Strategic Merge Patches
    • JSON Patches
  • Replacements
    • Copying values between objects
    • Inserting static values into objects
  • Generators
    • Generating ConfigMaps and Secrets
    • Mappig files to ConfigMaps and Secrets
  • Components
    • Creating and using Components
    • Relation of resources and components
  • Using Kustomize
    • CLI usage
    • Kustomize and GitOps / CD pipelines
    • Kustomize and Helm
    • Best practices
  • Kustomize internals
    • Processing order and output order
    • Meta information in objects
    • Deprecations
    • Custom resources in Kustomize

Target Audience and Prerequisites

The training is aimed at developers and administrators. Participants must be familiar with using Kubernetes. This includes understanding of application containers, images, and registries, as well as how to work with basic Kubernetes resources.

Your trainer: Fabian Thorns

Upcoming Trainings

Due to the high prerequisites, we typically offer this course as in-house training with a customized scope—for example, as a one-day add-on to our Kubernetes, Helm, or Argo CD training, or as a multi-day course with supplementary Kubernetes and GitOps content. Please contact us to find the format that best suits your needs.

Inhouse training

  1. This course is also available as in-house training.

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