🚀 DevOps & Cloud-Native Engineering: Complete Curriculum Index

Welcome to the DevOps and Cloud-Native Engineering documentation series. This collection is structured as an end-to-end operational curriculum spanning CI/CD pipelines, containerization, Kubernetes orchestration, Infrastructure as Code, GitOps continuous delivery, high-performance web architecture, observability, secrets management, and supply chain security.

Every guide in this series strictly follows a two-part learning format:

  • ⚡ Quick Dive: Executive comparison tables, CLI cheat sheets, and quick configuration one-liners for instant lookup.
  • 📖 Extended Guide: Deep architectural blueprints, production YAML/HCL manifests, failure modes, and enterprise best practices.

📚 Complete Curriculum Roadmap

Part 1: CI/CD & Pipeline Automation

# Guide Primary Topics Covered
01 CI/CD Essentials & Pipelines Core CI/CD theory, stages (Lint, Test, Build, Scan, Deploy), DORA metrics, branch strategies, test pyramid, and artifact immutability.
02 CI/CD Tooling Comparison Architectural comparison matrix (GitHub Actions, GitLab CI, Jenkins, CircleCI, Tekton, Argo Workflows), and selection heuristics.
03 GitHub Actions & Workflows Workflow YAML syntax, event triggers, build matrices, caching, composite actions, reusable workflows, and passwordless OIDC cloud auth.
04 Jenkins Declarative Pipelines Jenkins controller vs. dynamic Kubernetes agents, Declarative Jenkinsfile syntax, shared libraries, credential binding, and post-execution hooks.
05 Deployment Strategies & Zero-Downtime Rolling updates (maxSurge), Blue/Green cutover, Canary traffic shifting, Shadow releases, and Expand-Contract database migrations.

Part 2: Containers & Kubernetes Orchestration

# Guide Primary Topics Covered
07 Docker & Multi-Stage Builds OCI image layer mechanics, caching optimization, multi-stage builds (shrinking 1GB $\to$ 15MB), Distroless/Alpine base images, and non-root execution.
08 Kubernetes Core Concepts & Architecture Control plane vs. Worker nodes, Pods, Deployments, StatefulSets, Services (ClusterIP, NodePort, LoadBalancer), Ingress, and complete YAML manifests.
09 Helm Package Manager for Kubernetes Helm chart anatomy (Chart.yaml, values.yaml, templates/), Go template functions, multi-environment deployments, and --atomic releases.

Part 3: Infrastructure as Code & GitOps

# Guide Primary Topics Covered
06 Infrastructure as Code Fundamentals Declarative vs. Imperative IaC, immutable infrastructure ("cattle vs. pets"), state file architectures, configuration drift, and IaC testing (tflint, checkov).
10 Terraform & OpenTofu IaC HCL2 syntax, providers, remote state backends (S3 + DynamoDB locking), modules, workspaces, outputs, and lifecycle rules (prevent_destroy).
11 GitOps & Argo CD The 4 OpenGitOps principles, pull-based security model, Application CRD, automated self-healing, sync waves, and the App-of-Apps pattern.

Part 4: High Performance, Observability & Security

# Guide Primary Topics Covered
12 Web Server Optimization: Nginx & PHP-FPM High-concurrency Nginx tuning, PHP-FPM process managers (pm.max_children memory formula), Unix domain sockets, and FastCGI microcaching.
13 Observability: Prometheus, Grafana & OpenTelemetry The 3 pillars (Metrics, Logs, Traces), Prometheus pull model, PromQL formulas, Alertmanager, SRE 4 Golden Signals, and OpenTelemetry tracing.
14 Secret Management & HashiCorp Vault Centralized secrets governance, dynamic auto-expiring database credentials, Kubernetes External Secrets Operator (ESO), and SOPS + age encryption.
15 Supply Chain Security, SBOM & Cosign Vulnerability scanning (Trivy), Software Bill of Materials (Syft SBOM), digital image signing (Cosign / Sigstore), and Kyverno admission policies.
⌂ All Guides