OBS-02 · Observability, Testing and Automation
Find the bottleneck, then keep the SLA.
Measure a cluster network end to end, locate the slow hop, and set an SLA you can actually keep.
You build: a performance dashboard with an SLA and its error budget.
Promise
Find the bottleneck in a cluster network, measure it, and set an SLA you can keep.
Prerequisites
basic Kubernetes; PDP-01 helpful.
Units
1. The stack and bottlenecks ch 01–04
Linux stack review, container bottlenecks, container network options.
2. Mesh and policy tuning ch 05–07
service mesh performance, policy performance, CNI benchmarking.
3. Latency, bandwidth, DNS ch 08–10
.
4. Traffic monitoring ch 11–14
east–west, north–south, observability tools, eBPF monitoring.
5. Troubleshooting ch 15–16
troubleshooting toolbox, root-cause analysis.
6. Scale ch 17–24
multi-cluster, cloud vendors, security versus performance, IPv6, edge, large clusters, quotas and isolation, GPU nodes, mesh telemetry.
7. Operations and future ch 25–30
telemetry cost, cost optimization, chaos engineering, baselines and SLAs, automation.
Labs
Each lab names its environment and a pass check. Labs are not marked complete on "it ran" — the pass check has to hold.
| Lab | What you do | Environment |
|---|---|---|
| OBS-02ach 08 | Pod-to-pod latency measurementPass check: Latency table | container60 min |
| OBS-02bch 14 | eBPF-based network monitoringPass check: Metric visible | container90 min |
| OBS-02cch 16 | Root-cause exercise on an injected faultPass check: Fault found | container90 min |
| OBS-02dch 28 | Write an SLA and a baselinePass check: SLA with its measurement | container60 min |
Capstone project · CAP-04
Multi-Cluster Mesh with Policy · 3 weeks
Two clusters must share three services. Only named flows may cross, all encrypted, all observable.
Build the mesh, the policy, and the SLA dashboard. Show a denied flow and an allowed flow.
Deliverables: Manifests, test suite, dashboard, runbook.
Outcomes
- I can separate a latency problem into the network, the mesh, and the application.
- I can write an SLA that names what is measured and how.
- I can run a small chaos experiment and report what broke.
Also in
How it runs
Work through the units in order. Each unit groups the chapters of the study guide with its share of the labs. You can start any time; there is no cohort date and nothing expires.
Labs run in a VM, a container, a simulator or on real hardware, and the card above names which. Where a lab needs hardware — an RDMA NIC, a programmable switch model, an FPGA — there is a simulator fallback so you are never blocked by equipment.
Questions
Do I get a certificate?
You get a completion record for the course. Path badges and project credentials are earned by passing the labs and the project review, not by attendance.
Can my team take this together?
Yes — and if you would rather have it delivered live, with the instructor in the room, this course also exists as a scheduled live cohort. See the live dates.
How long does it take?
≈ 30 h of study including the labs. Most engineers take it part-time over a few weeks.