Kubernetes Essentials - Deploying and Managing Applications

Updated in May 2025. This course now features Coursera Coach! A smarter way to learn with interactive, real-time conversations that help you test your knowledge, challenge assumptions, and deepen your understanding as you progress through the course. Gain practical, in-demand skills to deploy, scale, and manage containerized applications using Kubernetes. By the end of this course, you'll be able to set up a local Kubernetes environment, manage workloads with Pods and Deployments, expose applications using Services, and automate infrastructure using YAML manifests—key capabilities for cloud-native development and DevOps roles. The course starts with a clear introduction to Kubernetes architecture, its core components, and the kubectl CLI. You'll then install and configure essential tools like kubectl and Minikube on Mac, Linux, and Windows. As you progress, you'll run containers in Kubernetes using Pods, manage their lifecycle, and generate reusable YAML manifests. You’ll move from imperative to declarative object management for more scalable and maintainable deployments. This course is ideal for developers, DevOps engineers, and IT professionals with basic container and CLI experience. Designed at an intermediate level, it includes hands-on labs and real-world examples to build your confidence in working with Kubernetes.