Fans pick 42 books like Kubernetes in Action

By Marko Luksa,

Here are 42 books that Kubernetes in Action fans have personally recommended if you like Kubernetes in Action. Shepherd is a community of 12,000+ authors and super readers sharing their favorite books with the world.

When you buy books, we may earn a commission that helps keep our lights on (or join the rebellion as a member).

Book cover of Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems

Yevgeniy Brikman Author Of Fundamentals of DevOps and Software Delivery: A Hands-On Guide to Deploying and Managing Software in Production

From my list on practical, hands-on books on DevOps and software delivery.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve spent more than a decade working on infrastructure, from my early days at LinkedIn, where we had to do a massive DevOps transformation to save the company, to co-founding Gruntwork, where I had the opportunity to work with hundreds of companies on their software delivery practices. From all of this, I can say the following with certainty: the DevOps best practices that a handful of the top tech companies have figured out are not filtering down to the rest of the industry. This is making the entire software industry slower, less effective, and less secure—and I see it as my mission to fix that.

Yevgeniy's book list on practical, hands-on books on DevOps and software delivery

Yevgeniy Brikman Why did Yevgeniy love this book?

This is the best overview of data storage and distributed systems—two key concepts for building almost any piece of software today—that I've seen anywhere. Martin does a wonderful job of taking a massive body of research and distilling complicated concepts and difficult trade-offs down to a level anyone can understand.

I learned a lot about replication, partitioning, linearizability, locking, write skew, phantoms, transactions, event logs, and more. I'm also a big fan of the final chapter, The Future of Data Systems, which covers ideas such as "unbundling the database", end-to-end event streams, and an important discussion on ethics in programming and data systems.

By Martin Kleppmann,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked Designing Data-Intensive Applications as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Data is at the center of many challenges in system design today. Difficult issues need to be figured out, such as scalability, consistency, reliability, efficiency, and maintainability. In addition, we have an overwhelming variety of tools, including NoSQL datastores, stream or batch processors, and message brokers. What are the right choices for your application? How do you make sense of all these buzzwords? In this practical and comprehensive guide, author Martin Kleppmann helps you navigate this diverse landscape by examining the pros and cons of various technologies for processing and storing data. Software keeps changing, but the fundamental principles remain…


Book cover of Java Persistence with Hibernate

Laurentiu Spilca Author Of Spring Security in Action

From my list on a technical shelf of books for a Java Engineer.

Why am I passionate about this?

My passion for computer science started while spending my free time gaming in my young adult days, leading me to experiment with C++ and then dive into enterprise-level Java applications during high school. My enthusiasm for Java propelled me to teach and share my knowledge through Java and Spring tutorials on YouTube. I also frequent conferences where I exchange ideas on various software topics. My constant wish to contribute further to the community is filled by writing technical books. This mix of teaching, creating, and constant learning fuels me and pushes me further into the tech world. I really hope you will enjoy this selection of technical books! 

Laurentiu's book list on a technical shelf of books for a Java Engineer

Laurentiu Spilca Why did Laurentiu love this book?

Mastering a tool like Hibernate is essential when dealing with Spring Boot and databases, as it can simplify the development process if used correctly.

I was particularly impressed by how the authors tackled complex concepts like caching, lazy loading, and transaction management, making them accessible and relatable to persons with zero to no experience, and also making sure that someone with experience does not get bored either.

I found that managing entities correctly and knowing how to deal with JPQL automatically results in a cleaner, more scalable, and performant code base. 

By Christian Bauer, Gavin King, Gary Gregory

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Java Persistence with Hibernate as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

DESCRIPTION

Persistence-the ability of data to outlive an instance of a program-is central to modern applications. Hibernate, the most popular provider of the Java Persistence standard, offers automatic and transparent object/relational mapping, making it a snap to work with SQL databases in Java applications.

Java Persistence with Hibernate, Second Edition explores Hibernate by developing an application that ties together hundreds of individual examples. It digs into the rich programming model of Hibernate, working through mappings, queries, fetching strategies, transactions, conversations, caching, and more and provides a well-illustrated discussion of best practices in database design and optimization techniques. This revised edition…


Book cover of Microservice Patterns: With examples in Java

Laurentiu Spilca Author Of Spring Security in Action

From my list on a technical shelf of books for a Java Engineer.

Why am I passionate about this?

My passion for computer science started while spending my free time gaming in my young adult days, leading me to experiment with C++ and then dive into enterprise-level Java applications during high school. My enthusiasm for Java propelled me to teach and share my knowledge through Java and Spring tutorials on YouTube. I also frequent conferences where I exchange ideas on various software topics. My constant wish to contribute further to the community is filled by writing technical books. This mix of teaching, creating, and constant learning fuels me and pushes me further into the tech world. I really hope you will enjoy this selection of technical books! 

Laurentiu's book list on a technical shelf of books for a Java Engineer

Laurentiu Spilca Why did Laurentiu love this book?

To be honest, I did not expect to learn something new from this book, given the fact that I have been working on enterprise-level applications since high school, which mostly follow a microservice architecture. 

Still, I have to admit that in Richardson's discussion on decomposition strategies, inter-service communication, and managing distributed data, I still got some valuable insights into dealing with such an architecture. Particularly, the saga pattern for managing transactions was definitely a game-changer for me.

By Chris Richardson,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Microservice Patterns as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.


Book cover of Docker in Action

Laurentiu Spilca Author Of Spring Security in Action

From my list on a technical shelf of books for a Java Engineer.

Why am I passionate about this?

My passion for computer science started while spending my free time gaming in my young adult days, leading me to experiment with C++ and then dive into enterprise-level Java applications during high school. My enthusiasm for Java propelled me to teach and share my knowledge through Java and Spring tutorials on YouTube. I also frequent conferences where I exchange ideas on various software topics. My constant wish to contribute further to the community is filled by writing technical books. This mix of teaching, creating, and constant learning fuels me and pushes me further into the tech world. I really hope you will enjoy this selection of technical books! 

Laurentiu's book list on a technical shelf of books for a Java Engineer

Laurentiu Spilca Why did Laurentiu love this book?

Docker is the technology that works perfectly along with Kubernetes, and I believe that in such a fast-paced development environment, applications do not need to depend on the machine that they are running on.

What truly stood out for me was the exploration of Docker's features like images, networks, containers, and volumes, and how these elements create a consistent environment for applications to run. This consistency is key in eliminating the "well, it works on my machine" problem, making our lives easier and our work more portable.

By Jeff Nickoloff, Stephen Kuenzli, Bret Fisher

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Docker in Action as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The idea behind Docker is simple. Create a tiny virtual environment called a container that holds just your application and its dependencies. The Docker engine uses the host operating system to keep track of your containers. Applications running inside containers share resources, making their footprints small. They are easy to install, manage, and remove.
Docker in Action, Second Edition teaches you to create, deploy, and manage applications hosted in Docker containers running on Linux. Fully updated, with four new chapters and revised best practices and examples, this second edition begins with a clear explanation of the Docker model. Then, you…


Book cover of Enterprise Java Microservices

Laurentiu Spilca Author Of Spring Security in Action

From my list on a technical shelf of books for a Java Engineer.

Why am I passionate about this?

My passion for computer science started while spending my free time gaming in my young adult days, leading me to experiment with C++ and then dive into enterprise-level Java applications during high school. My enthusiasm for Java propelled me to teach and share my knowledge through Java and Spring tutorials on YouTube. I also frequent conferences where I exchange ideas on various software topics. My constant wish to contribute further to the community is filled by writing technical books. This mix of teaching, creating, and constant learning fuels me and pushes me further into the tech world. I really hope you will enjoy this selection of technical books! 

Laurentiu's book list on a technical shelf of books for a Java Engineer

Laurentiu Spilca Why did Laurentiu love this book?

This is another amazing book that offers a fresh view of microservice architecture and its benefits and challenges.

Besides advice on designing and managing microservices for large-scale Java applications, the part that stuck out to me the most was the deep dive into cloud-native development and the "Just enough Application Server (JeAS)" approach.

Any book that makes me rethink and improve my strategies for building resilient and robust apps is a gem.

By Ken Finnigan,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Enterprise Java Microservices as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Description

Microservices break down a large application into smaller components, each interacting with each other to create a united whole. As each component can start, stop, and scale independently, so the whole system benefits from better fault-tolerance and resilience.

Enterprise Java Microservices is an example-rich tutorial that shows readers how to design and manage large-scale Java applications as a collection of microservices.

Key features

* The microservices mental model

* Fault tolerance with Netflix Hystrix

* Securing your microservices

* Deploying to the cloud

Audience

This book is for Java developers familiar with distributed n-tier application architecture.


About the technology…


Book cover of Infrastructure as Code: Dynamic Systems for the Cloud Age

Yevgeniy Brikman Author Of Fundamentals of DevOps and Software Delivery: A Hands-On Guide to Deploying and Managing Software in Production

From my list on practical, hands-on books on DevOps and software delivery.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve spent more than a decade working on infrastructure, from my early days at LinkedIn, where we had to do a massive DevOps transformation to save the company, to co-founding Gruntwork, where I had the opportunity to work with hundreds of companies on their software delivery practices. From all of this, I can say the following with certainty: the DevOps best practices that a handful of the top tech companies have figured out are not filtering down to the rest of the industry. This is making the entire software industry slower, less effective, and less secure—and I see it as my mission to fix that.

Yevgeniy's book list on practical, hands-on books on DevOps and software delivery

Yevgeniy Brikman Why did Yevgeniy love this book?

This is a book for practitioners, by a practitioner, full of practical learnings that I was able to start using in my work immediately.

I especially appreciated the parts teaching the core principles of infrastructure as code (e.g., systems are disposable, consistent, can easily be reproduced, etc.), core practices of infrastructure as code (e.g., use definition files, self-documented systems and processes, version all the things, etc.), and the idea of antifragile systems (rather than just systems that you prevent from breaking) and autonomic systems (rather than just automated systems).

By Kief Morris,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Infrastructure as Code as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Six years ago, Infrastructure as Code was a new concept. Today, as even banks and other conservative organizations plan moves to the cloud, development teams for companies worldwide are attempting to build large infrastructure codebases. With this practical book, Kief Morris of ThoughtWorks shows you how to effectively use principles, practices, and patterns pioneered by DevOps teams to manage cloud-age infrastructure.

Ideal for system administrators, infrastructure engineers, software developers, team leads, and architects, this updated edition demonstrates how you can exploit cloud and automation technology to make changes easily, safely, quickly, and responsibly. You'll learn how to define everything as…


Book cover of Continuous Delivery: Reliable Software Releases through Build, Test, and Deployment Automation

Yevgeniy Brikman Author Of Fundamentals of DevOps and Software Delivery: A Hands-On Guide to Deploying and Managing Software in Production

From my list on practical, hands-on books on DevOps and software delivery.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve spent more than a decade working on infrastructure, from my early days at LinkedIn, where we had to do a massive DevOps transformation to save the company, to co-founding Gruntwork, where I had the opportunity to work with hundreds of companies on their software delivery practices. From all of this, I can say the following with certainty: the DevOps best practices that a handful of the top tech companies have figured out are not filtering down to the rest of the industry. This is making the entire software industry slower, less effective, and less secure—and I see it as my mission to fix that.

Yevgeniy's book list on practical, hands-on books on DevOps and software delivery

Yevgeniy Brikman Why did Yevgeniy love this book?

This is one of those books that changed how I thought about and approached software development. First, the book addressed the pain points that I had run into so often: the problems with infrequent, manual deployments, the outages caused by changing configuration rather than source code, the nightmare of merge conflicts that you get from long-lived feature branches, and so on.

Then, it showed how to flip the typical software development process on its head through CI / CD, changing the default from “our software is broken, and we need an integration and release process to get it working” to “our software is always working, and we can release it at any time.” Once I read it, I could never go back to the old way.

By Jez Humble, David Farley,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Continuous Delivery as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Winner of the 2011 Jolt Excellence Award!

Getting software released to users is often a painful, risky, and time-consuming process.This groundbreaking new book sets out the principles and technical practices that enable rapid, incremental delivery of high quality, valuable new functionality to users. Through automation of the build, deployment, and testing process, and improved collaboration between developers, testers, and operations, delivery teams can get changes released in a matter of hours-sometimes even minutes-no matter what the size of a project or the complexity of its code base.

Jez Humble and David Farley begin by presenting the foundations of a rapid,…


Book cover of Practice of Cloud System Administration, The: DevOps and SRE Practices for Web Services, Volume 2

Yevgeniy Brikman Author Of Fundamentals of DevOps and Software Delivery: A Hands-On Guide to Deploying and Managing Software in Production

From my list on practical, hands-on books on DevOps and software delivery.

Why am I passionate about this?

I’ve spent more than a decade working on infrastructure, from my early days at LinkedIn, where we had to do a massive DevOps transformation to save the company, to co-founding Gruntwork, where I had the opportunity to work with hundreds of companies on their software delivery practices. From all of this, I can say the following with certainty: the DevOps best practices that a handful of the top tech companies have figured out are not filtering down to the rest of the industry. This is making the entire software industry slower, less effective, and less secure—and I see it as my mission to fix that.

Yevgeniy's book list on practical, hands-on books on DevOps and software delivery

Yevgeniy Brikman Why did Yevgeniy love this book?

This book felt like a chance to sit with a few experienced Ops people and hear their war stories.

The book is full of concrete, actionable learnings that are essential for running software, including operational requirements (e.g., configuration, draining, hot swaps, feature toggles, graceful degradation, etc.), software architecture (e.g., three-tier web service, four-tier web service, load balancing models etc.), scaling patterns (e.g., horizontal duplication, service splits, caching, etc.), resiliency patterns (software vs hardware resiliency, spare capacity, failure domains, etc.), and much more.

I loved being able to pick up decades of experience and hard-won knowledge by just flipping through a few pages of a book! 

By Thomas Limoncelli, Strata Chalup, Christina Hogan

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Practice of Cloud System Administration, The as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"There's an incredible amount of depth and thinking in the practices described here, and it's impressive to see it all in one place."

-Win Treese, coauthor of Designing Systems for Internet Commerce

The Practice of Cloud System Administration, Volume 2, focuses on "distributed" or "cloud" computing and brings a DevOps/SRE sensibility to the practice of system administration. Unsatisfied with books that cover either design or operations in isolation, the authors created this authoritative reference centered on a comprehensive approach.

Case studies and examples from Google, Etsy, Twitter, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon, and other industry giants are explained in practical ways that…


Book cover of Release It!

Magnus Larsson Author Of Microservices with Spring Boot 3 and Spring Cloud: Build resilient and scalable microservices using Spring Cloud, Istio, and Kubernetes

From my list on mastering Java and Spring-based microservices.

Why am I passionate about this?

My passion for developing production-ready, cooperating microservices began in 2008 when I first started assisting customers in creating distributed systems—long before the term “microservices” was coined. During that time, I faced significant challenges, including grappling with the “Eight Fallacies of Distributed Computing”. Since then, I’ve dedicated most of my career to deepening my understanding of these complexities and finding ways to address them through robust architecture, design patterns, and the right tools.

Magnus' book list on mastering Java and Spring-based microservices

Magnus Larsson Why did Magnus love this book?

A common reason for microservice projects to fail is a lack of understanding of how to build resilient and fault-tolerant microservices.

This book was a game-changer for me, providing essential strategies to address these challenges. It taught me how to avoid anti-patterns like Cascading Failures and embrace patterns like Circuit Breaker and Bulkhead to manage temporary network issues and overload situations. The real-world solutions it offers were immediately applicable to my projects.

By Michael T. Nygard,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Release It! as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

A single dramatic software failure can cost a company millions of dollars - but can be avoided with simple changes to design and architecture. This new edition of the best-selling industry standard shows you how to create systems that run longer, with fewer failures, and recover better when bad things happen. New coverage includes DevOps, microservices, and cloud-native architecture. Stability antipatterns have grown to include systemic problems in large-scale systems. This is a must-have pragmatic guide to engineering for production systems. If you're a software developer, and you don't want to get alerts every night for the rest of your…


Book cover of Kafka in Action

Magnus Larsson Author Of Microservices with Spring Boot 3 and Spring Cloud: Build resilient and scalable microservices using Spring Cloud, Istio, and Kubernetes

From my list on mastering Java and Spring-based microservices.

Why am I passionate about this?

My passion for developing production-ready, cooperating microservices began in 2008 when I first started assisting customers in creating distributed systems—long before the term “microservices” was coined. During that time, I faced significant challenges, including grappling with the “Eight Fallacies of Distributed Computing”. Since then, I’ve dedicated most of my career to deepening my understanding of these complexities and finding ways to address them through robust architecture, design patterns, and the right tools.

Magnus' book list on mastering Java and Spring-based microservices

Magnus Larsson Why did Magnus love this book?

Apache Kafka is the industry standard for real-time event streaming, an essential component for large-scale, high-performance microservice ecosystems.

Despite being new to Kafka when I read this book, it quickly brought me up to speed on key concepts that underpin its scalability and real-time capabilities, such as the commit log, topic partitions, and consumer groups. The book also introduces other critical Kafka features like the schema registry, Kafka Connect, and stream processing with Kafka Streams and ksqlDB. The practical examples provided were straightforward to apply and adapt to my own use cases.

By Dylan Scott, Viktor Gamov, Dave Klein

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Kafka in Action as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Kafka in Action is a practical, hands-on guide to building Kafka-based data pipelines. Filled with real-world use cases and scenarios, this book probes Kafka's most common use cases, ranging from simple logging through managing streaming data systems for message routing, analytics, and more.

In systems that handle big data, streaming data, or fast data, it's important to get your data pipelines right. Apache Kafka is a wicked-fast distributed streaming platform that operates as more than just a persistent log or a flexible message queue.

Key Features

* Understanding Kafka's concepts

* Implementing Kafka as a message queue

* Setting up…


Book cover of Designing Data-Intensive Applications: The Big Ideas Behind Reliable, Scalable, and Maintainable Systems
Book cover of Java Persistence with Hibernate
Book cover of Microservice Patterns: With examples in Java

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