Pods

Pods#

Pods are k8s abstractions that can be interpreted as a single application. In the container runtime, pods can be considered as a group of containers/volumes. This section discusses typical operations associated with pods.

Config#

You can use a configuration file to define a pod’s properties.

There are few important details associated with pods configuration:

  • The file can be in YAML or JSON format.

  • The command kubectl create -f <file> runs the pod specified in the given configuration file.

The following cell creates the pod configuration file.

rm -rf /tmp/pods_config && mkdir /tmp/pods_config
cat << EOF > /tmp/pods_config/pods_config.yml
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: nginx-pod
spec:
  containers:
  - name: nginx-pod
    image: nginx:1.22.1
    ports:
    - containerPort: 80
EOF

With kubectl create -f <file name> you can create the pod.

kubectl create -f /tmp/pods_config/pods_config.yml
kubectl get pods

pod/nginx-pod created
NAME        READY   STATUS              RESTARTS   AGE
nginx-pod   0/1     ContainerCreating   0          0s

kubectl delete pod nginx-pod

pod "nginx-pod" deleted from default namespace

Generated config#

Use the --dry-run parameter to instruct the kubectl run pod to generate the config instead of actually running the pod. It typically used with the -o <yaml/json> parameter to specify the format.

The following cell shows the configuration for the nginx pod.

kubectl run pod --dry-run=client -o yaml --image=nginx:1.22.1 nginx-pod

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  labels:
    run: pod
  name: pod
spec:
  containers:
  - args:
    - nginx-pod
    image: nginx:1.22.1
    name: pod
    resources: {}
  dnsPolicy: ClusterFirst
  restartPolicy: Always
status: {}

Describe#

Use the nginx describe pod <pod_name> command to check the status of a pod.

The following cell creates the pod and shows the describe for it.

kubectl run nginx-pod --image=nginx:1.22.1
kubectl describe pod nginx-po
kubectl delete pod nginx-pod

Name:             nginx-pod
Namespace:        default
Priority:         0
Service Account:  default
Node:             minikube/192.168.49.2
Start Time:       Mon, 13 Oct 2025 11:49:48 +0200
Labels:           run=nginx-pod
Annotations:      <none>
Status:           Running
IP:               10.244.0.23
IPs:
  IP:  10.244.0.23
Containers:
  nginx-pod:
    Container ID:   docker://7a880563fab311448f207cb9909b63a34478f887fe7fca78a7aef99a5144451d
    Image:          nginx:1.22.1
    Image ID:       docker-pullable://nginx@sha256:fc5f5fb7574755c306aaf88456ebfbe0b006420a184d52b923d2f0197108f6b7
    Port:           <none>
    Host Port:      <none>
    State:          Running
      Started:      Mon, 13 Oct 2025 11:49:49 +0200
    Ready:          True
    Restart Count:  0
    Environment:    <none>
    Mounts:
      /var/run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount from kube-api-access-vt79d (ro)
Conditions:
  Type                        Status
  PodReadyToStartContainers   True 
  Initialized                 True 
  Ready                       True 
  ContainersReady             True 
  PodScheduled                True 
Volumes:
  kube-api-access-vt79d:
    Type:                    Projected (a volume that contains injected data from multiple sources)
    TokenExpirationSeconds:  3607
    ConfigMapName:           kube-root-ca.crt
    Optional:                false
    DownwardAPI:             true
QoS Class:                   BestEffort
Node-Selectors:              <none>
Tolerations:                 node.kubernetes.io/not-ready:NoExecute op=Exists for 300s
                             node.kubernetes.io/unreachable:NoExecute op=Exists for 300s
Events:
  Type    Reason     Age   From               Message
  ----    ------     ----  ----               -------
  Normal  Scheduled  4s    default-scheduler  Successfully assigned default/nginx-pod to minikube
  Normal  Pulled     3s    kubelet            Container image "nginx:1.22.1" already present on machine
  Normal  Created    3s    kubelet            Created container: nginx-pod
  Normal  Started    3s    kubelet            Started container nginx-pod
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