The Linux Academy Blog
Practical guides for cloud, DevOps & data engineers
Hands-on walkthroughs on the tools we teach — CI/CD, streaming, observability, databases and cloud. Written to get you productive, then point you to a free course to go deeper.
What Happens When You Load a Web Page: Client to Server, End to End
The complete journey of one web request — URL parsing, DNS, IP routing, the TCP and TLS handshakes, the HTTP exchange, what the server does, and how the browser turns bytes into pixels. The famous interview question, answered in full.
Kubernetes Cost Optimization: A Practical Playbook
Where Kubernetes money actually leaks and how to stop it — pod and node right-sizing, node auto-provisioning (GKE NAP, EKS Auto Mode, Karpenter), ARM64, Spot-first with regular fallback, per-namespace compute classes, and the non-prod wins that cut the bill in half.
PodDisruptionBudgets on Kubernetes: The Safety Net Your StatefulSets Need
What PodDisruptionBudgets really do, why quorum-based StatefulSets like Consul, ClickHouse Keeper and MinIO can't run safely without one, and the exact PDB configs — with the traps that silently break upgrades and block autoscaling.
GKE Node Auto-Provisioning: Spot-First with Regular Fallback
Let GKE create the right node pools automatically, then cut compute cost dramatically with Spot-first, on-demand-fallback scheduling — the modern Custom Compute Classes way — plus a hands-on lab.
CDNs Explained: Google Cloud CDN & AWS CloudFront
How a CDN speeds up your site and cuts origin load, the caching concepts that matter, a practical comparison and setup of Google Cloud CDN and AWS CloudFront, and how to lift your hit ratio.
RDS & Cloud SQL: Day-to-Day Operations
Managed databases still need an operator. The routine tasks that keep AWS RDS and Google Cloud SQL healthy: backups & PITR, failover, scaling, parameter groups, monitoring, security and cost.