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Practice & Resources

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Access hands-on labs, company-specific guides, and curated resources to accelerate your platform engineering journey. This section provides practical materials for skill development and interview preparation.

🧪 Hands-On Labs​

Local Environment Labs​

Start with minimal setup:

  • Docker Basics: Container lifecycle management
  • Kubernetes Locally: Minikube and Kind setups
  • Terraform Starter: Local provider exercises
  • Git Workflows: Branching and CI/CD basics

Cloud Provider Labs​

Leverage free tiers:

  • AWS Labs: EC2, S3, Lambda, EKS
  • GCP Labs: Compute Engine, GKE, Cloud Run
  • Azure Labs: VMs, AKS, Functions
  • Multi-Cloud: Terraform across providers

Advanced Scenario Labs​

Real-world challenges:

  • Incident Response Simulation
  • Performance Optimization Workshop
  • Security Hardening Exercise
  • Cost Optimization Project

🏢 Company-Specific Guides​

FAANG Companies​

Detailed preparation for:

  • Amazon: Leadership principles, system design focus
  • Google: Scalability emphasis, SRE practices
  • Meta: Infrastructure scale, efficiency
  • Apple: Reliability, security focus
  • Netflix: Chaos engineering, microservices

Cloud Providers​

  • AWS: Solution architecture roles
  • Google Cloud: SRE and platform roles
  • Microsoft Azure: Cloud solution architect

Unicorn Startups​

  • Stripe: Developer experience focus
  • Airbnb: Service mesh, Kubernetes
  • Uber: Real-time systems, scale
  • Databricks: Data infrastructure

📚 Curated Resources​

Essential Books​

  • "Site Reliability Engineering" - Google's SRE book
  • "The Phoenix Project" - DevOps transformation
  • "Designing Data-Intensive Applications" - System design
  • "Kubernetes in Action" - Container orchestration
  • "Accelerate" - DevOps metrics and culture

Online Courses​

  • Linux Foundation: Kubernetes certifications
  • Cloud Provider Training: AWS, GCP, Azure paths
  • Udemy/Coursera: System design courses
  • YouTube Channels: TechWorld with Nana, DevOps Toolkit

Blogs & Newsletters​

  • Engineering Blogs: Netflix, Uber, Airbnb tech blogs
  • Newsletters: DevOps Weekly, KubeWeekly, SRE Weekly
  • Personal Blogs: Julia Evans, Brendan Gregg
  • Platforms: Dev.to, Medium engineering tags

Podcasts​

  • Kubernetes Podcast: Weekly news and interviews
  • DevOps Paradox: Industry discussions
  • SRE Prodcast: Google SRE team insights
  • The Changelog: Open source and engineering

🛠️ Tools & Playgrounds​

Online Environments​

  • Katacoda: Interactive tutorials (archived but accessible)
  • Play with Docker: Browser-based Docker
  • Play with Kubernetes: K8s in browser
  • Terraform Registry: Module examples

Development Tools​

  • VS Code Extensions: Kubernetes, Terraform, Docker
  • CLI Tools: kubectl, terraform, aws-cli
  • Monitoring: Prometheus, Grafana demos
  • CI/CD: Jenkins, GitLab CI templates

🎯 Practice Projects​

Beginner Projects​

  1. Personal Blog Platform: Deploy with containers
  2. Monitoring Dashboard: Prometheus + Grafana
  3. CI/CD Pipeline: Automated testing and deployment
  4. Infrastructure as Code: Provision cloud resources

Intermediate Projects​

  1. Microservices Application: Multiple services with service mesh
  2. Multi-Region Deployment: High availability setup
  3. Kubernetes Operator: Custom resource management
  4. Observability Platform: Logs, metrics, traces

Advanced Projects​

  1. Platform as a Service: Build internal platform
  2. Chaos Engineering Tool: Automated failure injection
  3. Cost Optimization System: Resource right-sizing
  4. Security Scanning Pipeline: Automated compliance

🤝 Communities & Networks​

Online Communities​

  • Reddit: r/devops, r/kubernetes, r/sre
  • Slack: Kubernetes, DevOps, Cloud Native
  • Discord: Various engineering servers
  • LinkedIn Groups: Platform engineering focus

Conferences & Events​

  • KubeCon + CloudNativeCon: CNCF flagship
  • DevOps Days: Local community events
  • SREcon: Site reliability engineering
  • Platform Engineering Day: Emerging conference

Meetups & User Groups​

  • Local Kubernetes Meetups
  • Cloud Provider User Groups
  • DevOps Meetups
  • Women in DevOps

📊 Assessment Tools​

Skill Evaluation​

  • Linux Command Line Quiz
  • Kubernetes Troubleshooting Scenarios
  • System Design Mock Interviews
  • Cloud Architecture Reviews

Interview Practice​

  • Pramp: System design practice
  • LeetCode: Coding challenges
  • System Design Primer: GitHub resource
  • Mock Interview Platforms

Ready to practice? Choose your path and start building!