When I first looked at Kubernetes, I saw a wall of YAML and acronyms. PVC, PV, StatefulSet, Endpoint — none of it connected. What helped was stepping back and mapping out what each piece actually does before trying to use any of it. Here's how I think about it now. A pod is the smallest unit A Pod is the smallest thing Kubernetes runs. It's one or more containers running together on the same node, sharing the same network and storage. apiVersion : v1 kind : Pod metadata : name : my-app labels : app : my-app spec : containers : - name : my-app image : nginx:latest ports : - containerPort : 80 Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode In practice I rarely create Pods directly. They're disposable. If a Pod dies, nothing brings it back on its own. A deployment keeps pods running A Deployment manages Pods for me. I tell it what to run and how many replicas I want, and it keeps that many alive.…