Pod

A Pod is the smallest schedulable Kubernetes unit. It can run one main container plus sidecars sharing network identity, volumes, and lifecycle — but application scaling usually means more pods, not bigger pods.

					apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: api
  labels:
    app: api
spec:
  containers:
    - name: node
      image: my-api:1.2.0
      ports:
        - containerPort: 3000
      resources:
        requests:
          cpu: 100m
          memory: 256Mi
        limits:
          memory: 512Mi
				

Containers in a pod share `localhost` and can mount the same volumes. Init containers run to completion before app containers start.

On interviews: shared localhost, restart policy, requests/limits, sidecars, init containers, and why pods are ephemeral.

Common pitfalls: treating pod IPs as stable; packing unrelated processes into one pod; missing resource requests so scheduling and HPA break.

The trade-off is colocation convenience versus independent scaling and failure isolation.

Checklist:

• Treat pods as ephemeral.
• Set requests and limits.
• Use sidecars only for shared lifecycle.
• Prefer Deployments over bare Pods for apps.