73 part series

Kubernetes From Scratch

Build a complete Kubernetes cluster by hand — no kubeadm, no scripts — from the first certificate to a real HA cluster, then use that cluster as a lab to deep-dive every Kubernetes concept. Part one: PKI/TLS, etcd, the control plane, workers, pod networking, CoreDNS. Part two: Pods, workload controllers, scheduling, storage, advanced networking (Cilium eBPF), security, extending the API, operations. Each component is both explained from the inside and stood up/configured by hand. Tested for real on AWS EC2 with Kubernetes v1.36; manifests/scripts at github.com/nghiadaulau/kubernetes-from-scratch. Grounded in the official docs at kubernetes.io.

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Full Teardown and Wrap-up

The final article. The EC2 cluster has done its job, and leaving it running burns money every hour. This article tears down all the infrastructure in order — terminate the six instances (taking their disks with them), release the Elastic IP, remove the IAM role — with a real cost table for three choices: keep running, stop to save it, or delete entirely. Then a look back: from a single self-signed certificate to a fully operational HA Kubernetes cluster, built by hand.

Kai··5 min read·DevOpsAWS