CI/CD for Microservices & Containers — Docker, Kubernetes & Pipeline Design

What Is CI/CD for Microservices?

Microservices promise velocity and scalability — but only if your CI/CD pipeline can handle dozens or hundreds of independently deployable services without chaos. This course teaches you to design, build, and operate CI/CD pipelines for containerized microservices: Docker image builds with caching and security scanning, Kubernetes deployments with Helm and Kustomize, progressive delivery with service mesh (Istio), GitOps with ArgoCD, and observability that spans the entire delivery pipeline.

Who Should Attend

• DevOps and platform engineers building CI/CD for Kubernetes-based microservices
• Software engineers working on microservices who want to understand their delivery infrastructure
• SREs responsible for microservice reliability and deployment safety
• Teams migrating from monoliths to microservices who need production-grade delivery pipelines

Learning Outcomes

• Design CI/CD pipelines for 50+ microservices with standardized, reusable pipeline templates
• Build optimized Docker images with multi-stage builds, layer caching, and security scanning
• Deploy microservices to Kubernetes with Helm, Kustomize, and progressive delivery (canary/blue-green)
• Implement GitOps with ArgoCD for automated, Git-driven deployments
• Configure service mesh (Istio) for traffic management, observability, and secure service-to-service communication
• Build pipeline observability — deployment frequency, lead time, change failure rate, MTTR

Course Modules

1. Microservices CI/CD Architecture — Pipeline design for N services. Monorepo vs. multi-repo. Build triggers. Dependency management.
2. Docker Image Engineering — Multi-stage builds. Layer caching. Distroless images. Image scanning (Trivy). SBOM (Syft). Signing (Cosign).
3. Pipeline Templates at Scale — Reusable pipeline templates (Jenkins shared libraries, GitHub Actions reusable workflows). Standardization across teams.
4. Kubernetes Deployments — Helm charts for microservices. Kustomize overlays. Config management. Secrets (Sealed Secrets, External Secrets).
5. GitOps with ArgoCD — Application definitions. Sync policies. Health checks. Multi-cluster with ApplicationSets. PR-driven deployments.
6. Progressive Delivery — Canary deployments with Flagger + Istio. Blue-green with Argo Rollouts. Automated metric-based promotion and rollback.
7. Service Mesh (Istio) — Traffic management. Circuit breaking. Retries. mTLS. Observability. Fault injection for testing.
8. Testing Microservices — Contract testing (Pact). Integration testing. End-to-end testing strategies. Testing in production (canary analysis).
9. Pipeline Observability — DORA metrics. Deployment dashboards. Build performance monitoring. Pipeline SLIs.
10. Security in Microservices CI/CD — Image signing and verification. Admission control (OPA/Kyverno). Runtime security (Falco). Supply chain security.
11. Multi-Environment Strategy — Preview environments per PR. Environment promotion. GitOps-based environment management. Infrastructure as Code for environments.
12. Capstone: Microservices Delivery Platform — Build a complete CI/CD platform: Docker build → scan → sign → ArgoCD deploy → canary release → Prometheus validation.

Hands-on Labs (24 total)

Build multi-stage Docker images with layer caching. Configure ArgoCD application sync for a microservice. Implement canary deployment with Flagger and automated Prometheus-based promotion. Set up Istio service mesh with mTLS and traffic splitting. Build a Jenkins shared library for standardized microservice pipelines. Configure container image signing with Cosign and admission control verification.

Enterprise Use Cases

• CI/CD platform for 200+ microservices with standardized pipeline templates, automated canary analysis, and GitOps-driven deployments
• Secure supply chain for container images: build → SBOM → sign → verify → deploy — all automated, all auditable
• Multi-cluster GitOps for microservices deployed across 3 regions with ArgoCD ApplicationSets

Related Courses

See also DevOps Engineering, GitOps Training, CloudOps Training for Kubernetes operations, and DevSecOps Training for container security.