Kubernetes Workloads
5 Topics
1
Pods — The Smallest Deployable Unit
Pod networking, shared volumes, and container relationships.
Interviewers will check if you understand container sharing inside a Pod. Be ready to explain how containers inside a single Pod share the network namespace (localhost routing), IPC namespace, and storage volumes, but remain isolated via separate PID namespaces.
2
ReplicaSets — Keeping Pods Running
Maintaining pod counts and identifying mismatches.
Understand the relationship between ReplicaSets and Pods. Interviewers love to ask: How does a ReplicaSet identify which Pods to manage? Explain label selectors and how ReplicaSets acquire orphaned Pods. Note that you should rarely manage ReplicaSets directly; Deployments manage them for you.
3
Deployments — Rolling Updates and Rollbacks
Updating applications, rollouts, strategies, and history checks.
Deployments are one of the most heavily tested workloads. Understand the difference between the RollingUpdate and Recreate strategies, how maxSurge and maxUnavailable control container rollouts, and how to roll back changes using undo commands.
4
StatefulSets — Running Stateful Applications
Handling stable network identifiers and dedicated disk persistent volumes.
StatefulSets are essential for database deployments. Focus on explaining how they differ from Deployments: stable ordinal network identities (pod-0, pod-1), stable storage bindings that persist even after a pod is deleted, headless services, and strict sequential scaling.
5
DaemonSets and Jobs — Node-Level Tasks and One-Off Work
Running logs gatherers and batch tasks.
Interviewers will test your understanding of specialized workloads. Explain when to use DaemonSets (e.g. monitoring agents on every node) vs Jobs (one-off tasks like database migrations) vs CronJobs (scheduled cron tasks).