What is a Pod and why is it the smallest deployable unit?

A Pod is the smallest and simplest unit in Kubernetes that represents a group of one or more containers that:

• Share the same network namespace (IP address and port space)
• Share storage volumes
• Are scheduled together on the same node
• Live and die together

Why Pods exist:

• Shared Resources: Containers in a pod can communicate via localhost and share volumes
• Co-location: Ensures tightly coupled containers run on the same node
• Atomic Unit: All containers in a pod are scheduled, started, and stopped together

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: my-pod
spec:
  containers:
  - name: web-container
    image: nginx:1.20
    ports:
    - containerPort: 80