73 Production Engineering Guides · 10 Client-Side DevOps Tools
Practical Cloud Infrastructure & DevOps Runbooks
Hands-on tutorials, incident troubleshooting guides, and privacy-first browser utilities for engineers operating Kubernetes, Terraform, Docker, Jenkins, Azure, CI/CD pipelines, observability stacks, and Linux systems in production.
Featured Tutorials
View full reading order (Junior → Senior) →In-Depth Production Engineering Guides
Every guide is built around runnable commands, complete YAML/HCL manifests, and real-world failure modes.
CI/CD
Intermediate20 minutes
GitOps Explained: Principles and a Complete Argo CD Tutorial
End-to-end guide to declarative GitOps on Kubernetes with Argo CD — Application manifests, sync waves, automated self-healing, App-of-Apps, ApplicationSets, and production rollbacks.
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Fundamentals
Beginner18 minutes
Ansible for Beginners: Automate Server Configuration
Agentless server configuration over SSH: inventories, ad-hoc commands, idempotent YAML playbooks, handlers, Jinja2 templates, variable precedence, and reusable roles.
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Kubernetes
Advanced14 minutes
Kubernetes RBAC Explained: Roles, Bindings, and Least Privilege
Design least-privilege access control in Kubernetes using Roles, ClusterRoles, RoleBindings, ServiceAccounts, and kubectl auth can-i auditing.
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Terraform
Intermediate14 minutes
Terraform State Explained: Backends, Locking, and Surgery
How Terraform tracks real-world infrastructure in state files — S3 and Azure remote backends, DynamoDB/Blob locking, secrets in state, and safe refactoring with state mv and moved blocks.
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Docker
Beginner14 minutes
Dockerfile Best Practices: Building Small, Secure Images
Cut container image sizes by 80% and harden runtime security with multi-stage builds, pinned digests, layer cache ordering, non-root users, and .dockerignore discipline.
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Observability
Intermediate14 minutes
Production Monitoring with Prometheus and Grafana
Deploy the Prometheus and Grafana monitoring stack, understand Counter, Gauge, and Histogram metric types, write PromQL queries for RED/USE signals, and build actionable dashboards.
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DevSecOps
Intermediate14 minutes
DevSecOps: Shifting Security Left in Your Pipeline
Integrate pre-commit secret detection, SAST, SCA dependency checks, Trivy container image scanning, and IaC policy gates into CI/CD without slowing developer velocity.
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Kubernetes
Intermediate14 minutes
Kubernetes Probes Done Right: Liveness, Readiness, and Startup
Prevent cascading restart loops and dropped requests during rolling deployments by configuring Kubernetes startup, readiness, and liveness probes with the right thresholds.
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Azure
Intermediate16 minutes
Azure AKS Networking: VNET Integration and CNI
Choose and configure the right Azure Kubernetes Service networking model — kubenet vs Azure CNI vs Azure CNI Overlay, subnet sizing, network policies, and private clusters.
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Incident Response
Production Troubleshooting Runbooks
Step-by-step diagnostic workflows for the errors engineers actually get paged for — from Kubernetes pod backoff loops to locked Terraform state backends.
KubernetesRunbook
Fix Kubernetes CrashLoopBackOff: 10 Common Solutions
Symptom: Pod repeatedly starts, crashes, and enters exponential backoffCovers: kubectl logs --previous, kubectl describe pod, exit codes 1 / 137 / 139
Open troubleshooting steps
KubernetesRunbook
ImagePullBackOff: How to Fix It Step by Step
Symptom: Kubelet fails to pull container image from registryCovers: imagePullSecrets, registry auth, tag typos, CPU architecture mismatch, Docker Hub rate limits
Open troubleshooting steps
KubernetesRunbook
Kubernetes Pod Not Ready: Debugging Guide
Symptom: Pod is Running (0/1 READY) and excluded from Service endpointsCovers: Readiness probe failures, kubectl get endpoints, network policies, init containers
Open troubleshooting steps
TerraformRunbook
Terraform 'Error Acquiring the State Lock': Causes and Fixes
Symptom: terraform plan/apply blocked by stale DynamoDB or Azure Blob lease lockCovers: Verify active CI runs, inspect Lock Info ID, safe terraform force-unlock procedure
Open troubleshooting steps
DockerRunbook
Docker Build Errors: Common Issues and Fixes
Symptom: COPY failed, permission denied, stale apt cache, or multi-platform build failureCovers: BuildKit cache mounts, .dockerignore context exclusions, UID/GID ownership
Open troubleshooting steps
AzureRunbook
Azure AKS Troubleshooting: Common Issues and Solutions
Symptom: AKS nodes NotReady, PVC attachment failures, or SNAT port exhaustionCovers: az aks get-credentials, kubelet logs, Azure CNI IP exhaustion, CSI disk mounts
Open troubleshooting steps
Explore by Technology Domain
73 structured tutorials organized across 10 core DevOps and cloud infrastructure tracks.
17 guides
Kubernetes
Pods, Deployments, RBAC, Ingress & TLS, storage, probes, kubectl cheat sheets, and incident debugging
9 guides
Terraform
HCL fundamentals, AWS & Azure modules, remote state backends, state lock recovery, and workspaces
9 guides
DevSecOps
Shift-left CI/CD security, SAST, Trivy container scanning, HashiCorp Vault, and Kubernetes Secrets
8 guides
Docker
Multi-stage Dockerfiles, Docker Compose v2 stacks, bridge networking, persistent volumes, and build errors
7 guides
Jenkins
Declarative Jenkinsfiles, shared libraries, parameterized builds, GitHub webhooks, and Nexus/Helm pipelines
6 guides
Fundamentals
Linux diagnostics, Git workflows, production Bash scripting, Ansible automation, Nginx TLS, and AWS essentials
5 guides
Helm
Chart authoring from scratch, Go templating, values.yaml patterns, SOPS secrets, and atomic rollbacks
4 guides
Azure
AKS VNet & CNI networking, AKS cluster troubleshooting, Entra ID IAM/RBAC, and Azure DevOps YAML pipelines
4 guides
CI/CD
Pipeline design, GitHub Actions matrix & OIDC workflows, platform comparisons, and Argo CD GitOps
4 guides
Observability
Prometheus metrics & PromQL, Grafana dashboards, Loki log aggregation, Alertmanager, and SLO error budgets
Level 1 · Foundations
Junior DevOps Track
Master the Linux command line, Git history recovery, defensive Bash scripting, multi-stage Dockerfiles, Docker Compose, and your first Kubernetes Deployment and Terraform plan.
Level 2 · Production Operations
Platform Engineer Track
Operate production workloads end-to-end: Kubernetes probes, ConfigMaps/Secrets, PV/PVC storage, Ingress TLS, Helm charts, GitHub Actions/Jenkins pipelines, and Prometheus/Loki monitoring.
Level 3 · Architecture & SRE
Senior & Staff Track
Design multi-team platforms: Terraform remote state surgery, least-privilege Kubernetes RBAC, shift-left DevSecOps, HashiCorp Vault dynamic secrets, Argo CD GitOps, and SLO error budgets.
100% Client-Side Browser Utilities
Free Interactive DevOps Tools
Validate YAML manifests, calculate VPC subnets, inspect JWT claims, and generate cron schedules directly in your browser — zero server uploads, paired with CLI cheat sheets.
YAML Validator & Formatter
Validate single or multi-doc (---) YAML with exact line numbers
IPv4 CIDR Subnet Calculator
Calculate netmasks, usable host ranges, and split VPC/VNet blocks
Base64 Encoder / Decoder
UTF-8 safe Base64 encoding for Kubernetes Secrets and auth headers
Cron Expression Generator
Build 5-field cron schedules with next-5-run timestamp previews
JSON / YAML Converter
Convert bidirectionally between JSON payloads and YAML manifests
JWT Decoder & Inspector
Inspect OIDC, OAuth2, and Kubernetes ServiceAccount token claims
Cryptographic Hash Generator
Compute SHA-256, SHA-384, SHA-512, SHA-1, and MD5 digests locally
JSON Beautifier & Minifier
Pretty-print, validate, and minify JSON configs and structured logs
URL Encoder / Decoder
Percent-encode special characters in database URIs and API queries
Image Converter & Resizer
Batch-convert PNG, JPEG, WebP, and PDF diagrams in your browser
Built by Practitioners, Tested Against Real Tooling
CloudOpsGuide is an independent engineering publication. Every guide is written around real commands, complete configurations, and production failure modes—never generic filler. Read about our editorial standards or contact our team with questions and topic requests.