k8s-workloads

Patterns and decisions for Kubernetes workload resources in self-hosted environments.

Workload Resource Decision

Resource	Use when	Key trait
Deployment	Stateless apps (web servers, APIs)	Random Pod names, shared volumes, non-ordered updates
StatefulSet	Stateful apps (databases, queues)	Stable ordinal names (`db-0`, `db-1`), per-Pod PVCs, ordered updates
DaemonSet	One Pod per node (log agents, monitoring, storage managers)	Tied to node lifecycle; use `hostPath` volumes
ReplicaSet	Rarely used directly — Deployment manages it	Lower-level; only if you need custom Pod selection without rollout
Job	One-time tasks (migrations, load tests)	Runs to completion; retries on failure
CronJob	Recurring tasks (backups, reports)	Generates Jobs on a schedule

Default choice: Deployment for anything stateless. StatefulSet for databases. CronJob for scheduled tasks.