The documentation, before you buy.

1. 01How a cluster fits together

   Control planes, workers, and what each BKE command does on which machine. Start here if Kubernetes is new to you.

2. 02Before you begin

   What each machine needs, what BKE reaches over the network, and the three decisions you cannot change afterwards.

3. 03Register your cluster

   Binding a licence to the machine that will be your first control-plane node, before anything is installed.

4. 04The first control-plane node

   kubeadm init through install.sh, and the arguments that are fixed for the life of the cluster.

5. 05Adding nodes

   Provisioning the remaining control-plane and worker nodes, and joining them to the cluster.

6. 06config.yaml

   The one file that describes your cluster, key by key, and what each one's absence costs.

7. 07Installing components

   apply.sh, what the plan is, and what reconciliation does and does not touch.

8. 08Secrets

   How BKE creates Secrets, how to keep your own, and exactly what a missing key costs you.

9. 09Cluster reporting

   The one thing that leaves your cluster on a schedule, field by field, what it cannot see, how to read it yourself, and how to turn it off.

10. 10Cluster login

    How BKE grants cluster access, what enabling it does to your cluster, and the identity providers it cannot support.

11. 11Upgrading

    What each digit of a BKE version promises, and the order to move a cluster in.

12. 12Storage

    Longhorn, the seven conditions that will stop an upgrade, and why engine images do not move on their own.

13. 13Reference architecture

    The production shape around a cluster — two load-balanced addresses, where traffic enters, and reference configurations for HAProxy and hardware balancers.

14. 14Ingress with Kong

    Exposing an application, obtaining TLS certificates, and the plugins that add rate limiting, caching and access control.

15. 15Logging with Fluent Bit

    What is collected from every node, how to point it at your log platform, and how to keep the credentials out of config.yaml.

16. 16The other components

    metrics-server, Kuma and netdata in daily use, and how to raise a support ticket that can be answered quickly.

17. 17The trial, in an afternoon

    Three Debian servers to a working cluster with storage, ingress and an application behind it — the evaluation path, end to end.

Three things stay off these pages by policy: exact version pins (they accompany the licence, in the console's release notes), our own estate, and competitors' prices.