Kubernetes provides a variety of controllers that you can use to define how pods are set up and deployed within the Kubernetes cluster. These controllers can be used to group pods together according to their runtime needs and define pod replication and pod start up ordering.

You can define a set of pods that should be replicated with a ReplicaSet. This allows you to define the exact configuration for each of the pods in the group and which resources they should have access to. Using ReplicaSets not only caters to the easy scaling and rescheduling of an application, but also allows you to perform rolling or multi-track updates to an application. For more information on ReplicaSets, see the upstream documentation at:

https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/workloads/controllers/replicaset/

You can use a Deployment to manage pods and ReplicaSets. Deployments are useful when you need to roll out changes to ReplicaSets. By using a Deployment to manage a ReplicaSet, you can easily rollback to an earlier Deployment revision. A Deployment allows you to create a newer revision of a ReplicaSet and then migrate existing pods from a previous ReplicaSet into the new revision. The Deployment can then manage the cleanup of older unused ReplicaSets. For more information on Deployments, see the upstream documentation at:

https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/workloads/controllers/deployment/

You can use StatefulSets to create pods that guarantee start up order and unique identifiers, which are then used to ensure that the pod maintains its identity across the lifecycle of the StatefulSet. This feature makes it possible to run stateful applications within Kubernetes, as typical persistent components such as storage and networking are guaranteed. Furthermore, when you create pods they are always created in the same order and allocated identifiers that are applied to host names and the internal cluster DNS. Those identifiers ensure there are stable and predictable network identities for pods in the environment. For more information on StatefulSets, see the upstream documentation at:

https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/workloads/controllers/statefulset/