A ReplicaSet's purpose is to maintain a stable set of replica Pods running at any given time. Usually, you define a Deployment and let that Deployment manage ReplicaSets automatically.

FEATURE STATE: Kubernetes v1.29 [beta] Sidecar containers are the secondary containers that run along with the main application container within the same Pod. These containers are used to enhance or to extend the functionality of the primary app container by providing additional services, or functionality such as logging, monitoring, security, or data synchronization, without directly altering the primary application code. Typically, you only have one app container in a Pod.

In Kubernetes, Services are an abstract way to expose an application running on a set of Pods. Services can have a cluster-scoped virtual IP address (using a Service of type: ClusterIP). Clients can connect using that virtual IP address, and Kubernetes then load-balances traffic to that Service across the different backing Pods. How Service ClusterIPs are allocated? When Kubernetes needs to assign a virtual IP address for a Service, that assignment happens one of two ways:

FEATURE STATE: Kubernetes v1.25 [stable] This page provides an overview of ephemeral containers: a special type of container that runs temporarily in an existing Pod to accomplish user-initiated actions such as troubleshooting. You use ephemeral containers to inspect services rather than to build applications. Understanding ephemeral containers Pods are the fundamental building block of Kubernetes applications. Since Pods are intended to be disposable and replaceable, you cannot add a container to a Pod once it has been created.

Kubernetes lets you configure single-stack IPv4 networking, single-stack IPv6 networking, or dual stack networking with both network families active. This page explains how.

In Kubernetes, some objects are owners of other objects. For example, a ReplicaSet is the owner of a set of Pods. These owned objects are dependents of their owner. Ownership is different from the labels and selectors mechanism that some resources also use. For example, consider a Service that creates EndpointSlice objects. The Service uses labels to allow the control plane to determine which EndpointSlice objects are used for that Service.

Resources that Kubernetes provides for configuring Pods.

A Secret is an object that contains a small amount of sensitive data such as a password, a token, or a key. Such information might otherwise be put in a Pod specification or in a container image. Using a Secret means that you don't need to include confidential data in your application code. Because Secrets can be created independently of the Pods that use them, there is less risk of the Secret (and its data) being exposed during the workflow of creating, viewing, and editing Pods.

Security architecture information relating to the API server and other components

Use kubeconfig files to organize information about clusters, users, namespaces, and authentication mechanisms. The kubectl command-line tool uses kubeconfig files to find the information it needs to choose a cluster and communicate with the API server of a cluster. Note: A file that is used to configure access to clusters is called a kubeconfig file. This is a generic way of referring to configuration files. It does not mean that there is a file named kubeconfig.