Courses Kubernetes fundamentalsFirst steps

Your first pod

Run something, then look at it.

Beginner10 min · lesson 5 of 24

In plain terms

Running your first pod is like pressing “play” — you ask Kubernetes to start one small thing, then peek behind the curtain to see where it landed and whether it’s happy.

Enough theory — let us run something. There are two ways: a quick one-liner for experiments, and the “real” way where you write a small file and apply it. Both start the same tiny web server.

terminal

# the quick way — great for a throwaway experiment
$ kubectl run web --image=nginx
$ kubectl get pods
NAME   READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
web    1/1     Running   0          8s
$ kubectl logs web

The real way: a file you apply

In practice you write the desired state in a small YAML file and apply it, so it lives in git and can be reviewed and re-run. This is the declarative habit the whole course builds on — the file is the source of truth.

pod.yaml

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: web
spec:
  containers:
    - name: web
      image: nginx:1.25
---
# then:  kubectl apply -f pod.yaml

Two statuses you will meet early

Pending means the pod has not been placed on a node yet. ImagePullBackOff means the image name or tag is wrong. kubectl describe pod web tells you which — read the Events line.

Meet kubectlPods, a little deeper