Cilium Foundation is an intensive, two-day hands-on course that gives working engineers a solid introduction to the Cilium cloud native networking solution. Day one opens with a Cilium overview module, where attendees install Kubernetes with the Cilium CNI. They replace kube-proxy outright rather than layering Cilium on top of it. The class then turns to network tuning and optimization. Students use the Bandwidth Manager in a hands-on lab to shape and prioritize cluster traffic. A network policy and encryption module follows, where attendees configure end-to-end encryption alongside enforceable policy rules that govern pod-to-pod communication. Day one closes with a security observability module built around Tetragon, giving students lab experience detecting and investigating runtime security events as they happen.
Day two covers additional features, opening with an L4 load balancer module. Participants implement eBPF-based load balancing that bypasses traditional kube-proxy data paths entirely. An Ingress/Egress Gateway module follows, walking attendees through configuring the Gateway to manage north-south traffic entering the cluster. Students then build an eBPF-based service mesh that spans multiple Kubernetes clusters, connecting workloads across cluster boundaries. The course wraps with an observability module, where attendees trace live network flows and review flow logs to diagnose traffic behavior in real time. Each day includes four modules split evenly between lecture and hands-on lab work. Attendees leave with the skills to run this networking solution in production Kubernetes environments.
Who Should Attend
Technology staff
What Attendees Will Learn
Upon completing Cilium Foundation, attendees will be able to:
- Install and configure Cilium as a Kubernetes CNI with kube-proxy replacement
- Tune and optimize Cilium network performance with the Bandwidth Manager
- Apply Cilium network policy and configure end-to-end encryption
- Monitor security events and runtime behavior with Tetragon
- Implement eBPF-based L4 load balancing
- Configure Cilium Ingress and Gateway functionality
- Implement service mesh and cluster mesh with Cilium
- Trace network flows and observe cluster traffic with Cilium
Prerequisites
Attendees should have basic Kubernetes experience and a fundamental understanding of networking.