Tutorials

Deep dives into DevOps and Server Side topics where theory blends with hands-on examples. You can try out commands from each tutorial in the attached remote playground, either from the browser or via SSH access from your local terminal — no extra setup required.

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Tutorial

How Container Filesystem Works: Building a Docker-like Container From Scratch

Learn how Linux containers are built from the ground up. Starting with the mount namespace and a root filesystem, see why PID, cgroup, UTS, and network namespaces naturally follow - and how this foundation makes concepts like bind mounts, volumes, and persistence in Docker or Kubernetes much easier to grasp.

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How to Build Smaller Container Images: Docker Multi-Stage Builds

Learn how to build smaller, more secure Docker container images using Multi-Stage Builds. This guide explains common sources of image bloat, best practices for slimming down production images, and practical examples for Node.js, Go, Rust, and other application stacks. Start optimizing your containers today!

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A Deeper Look into Node.js Docker Images: Help, My Node Image Has Python!

Choosing the right base image for your Node.js application can drastically affect its security, size, and performance. This post breaks down popular options - from slim and distroless to full-sized images - helping you navigate the trade-offs and pick the best fit for your development, build, and production needs.

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Tutorial

Transparent Ingress Proxy with eBPF and Envoy

This lab shows how to use eBPF to transparently redirect inbound traffic through an Envoy proxy on the server side, without modifying the application or client. You’ll learn how eBPF can intercept and restore connections so the service remains unaware of the proxy in the network path.

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Tutorial

Transparent Egress Proxy with eBPF and Envoy

This lab teaches you how to use eBPF to transparently intercept and redirect a client's outgoing traffic to an Envoy proxy without requiring any changes to the application code. You will build a system that recovers original connection metadata via socket-level hooks and uses SO_MARK to prevent infinite routing loops, replacing traditional, complex iptables rules with a high-performance eBPF alternative.

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Tutorial

All The Ways To Loop and Iterate in eBPF

In this tutorial you will learn different ways to implement loops in eBPF, explaining how iteration evolved from manual loop unrolling to modern mechanisms like bounded loops, helper functions, and open-coded iterators. It walks through the limitations, kernel version requirements, and practical examples for each approach so you can choose the most appropriate looping method for your eBPF programs.

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Tutorial

Different Ways To Deliver Kernel Events from eBPF to User Space

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how eBPF applications send kernel events into user space using perf buffer and ring buffer, exploring their design, trade-offs, and performance implications. You’ll also learn how moderns solutions like Jibril handle high-throughput event delivery.

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Hands-On Introduction to Unikernels

Learn what a unikernel is and how it compares to a Linux container. Build and run your first unikernel inside a playground box.

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Uncloud: How to Set Up a New Cluster

Learn how to create and manage a multi-machine Uncloud cluster from scratch. This hands-on tutorial walks you through initializing a cluster, adding machines, managing contexts, and deploying your first containerized service.

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Tutorial

Hands-On with XDP: eBPF for High-Performance Networking

In this tutorial, you’ll learn the fundamentals of eBPF and XDP through example code that parses packets across different protocol layers, demonstrates how XDP actions work, and shows how these building blocks form the foundation for high-performance networking applications.

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Network Traffic Rate Limiting with eBPF/XDP

Learn how to implement a basic per-client ICMPv6 packet rate limiter using eBPF/XDP. This tutorial shows how to track client activity with eBPF maps and enforce limits directly in the kernel—without any user-space interaction.

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eBPF Tracepoints, Kprobes, or Fprobes: Which One Should You Choose?

In this tutorial, we’ll look at how different eBPF tracing mechanisms work in practice by focusing on a single use case: capturing execve system call events. We’ll start with tracepoints, move on to raw tracepoints, and then cover kprobes and fprobes, showing how each attaches to the kernel and what data they expose. Along the way, we’ll compare their trade-offs in terms of stability, performance, and portability.

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Tutorial

Inspecting and Monitoring eBPF Applications

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to inspect eBPF programs and maps loaded into the kernel with bpftool, gaining deeper visibility into how your eBPF application runs. We’ll also explore bpftop, a top-like interface that lets you monitor eBPF program activity in real time.

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Storing Data in eBPF: Your First eBPF Map

In this tutorial, you’ll learn how to store and update data inside the kernel, turning a simple eBPF Hello World program into one that tracks useful state. We’ll also briefly learn a few basics of bpftool, a handy CLI tool that will allow us to list and inspect our eBPF map.

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From Zero to Your First eBPF Program

In this first tutorial, you’ll run a pre-coded eBPF program and see it in action without writing any code yourself. We’ll walk through the important parts of the program so you understand how eBPF hooks and runs in the kernel. The goal is to get familiar with the workflow and core concepts before you start writing your own eBPF programs.

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Tutorial

Kubernetes: Admission Control

Dive deep into Kubernetes admission control with hands-on examples. Learn how admission controllers influence cluster behavior, apply default configurations, and enforce policies for consistency and compliance.

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Tutorial

An Introduction to Docker Security

In this tutorial, we'll dive into the world of Docker Security, look at the attack surface of a Docker installation and show some straightforward container breakouts

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Containers are processes

In this brief tutorial we'll explore the idea that Docker containers are just processes, from the perspective of the operating system. Based on this Securitylabs blog post https://securitylabs.datadoghq.com/articles/container-security-fundamentals-part-1/

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