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Resource Units, Ports, and Pod Lifecycle Cheat Sheet

CPU Units

Notation Value
1 1 vCPU / core
1000m 1 vCPU / core (millicores)
500m 0.5 CPU
250m 0.25 CPU
100m 0.1 CPU

Memory Units

Suffix Base Example
Ki 1024 bytes 256Ki
Mi 1024 Ki 512Mi
Gi 1024 Mi 2Gi
K 1000 bytes 256K
M 1000 K 512M
G 1000 M 2G

Mi/Gi (binary, 1024-based) are the conventional choice for Kubernetes manifests; M/G (decimal, 1000-based) appear but mean a slightly smaller amount for the same number.

Well-Known Kubernetes Ports

Port Component
6443 kube-apiserver
2379-2380 etcd client/peer
10250 kubelet API
10257 kube-controller-manager
10259 kube-scheduler
10256 kube-proxy health check
30000-32767 NodePort range

Common Application Ports

Port Service
80 HTTP
443 HTTPS
5432 PostgreSQL
3306 MySQL/MariaDB
6379 Redis
27017 MongoDB
9090 Prometheus
3000 Grafana (default)

Pod Lifecycle Phases

Phase Meaning
Pending Accepted by the API server, not yet scheduled or still pulling images
Running Bound to a node, at least one container running
Succeeded All containers terminated with exit code 0
Failed All containers terminated, at least one with a non-zero exit code
Unknown State can't be determined, usually a lost connection to the node

Container States

State Meaning
Waiting Not running yet — pulling image, waiting on init containers
Running Executing normally
Terminated Finished (success or failure) — check reason and exitCode

Common Exit Codes

Code Meaning
0 Success
1 General application error
126 Command found but not executable
127 Command not found
137 SIGKILL — often OOM (128 + 9)
143 SIGTERM — graceful shutdown signal received (128 + 15)

Storage Access Modes

Mode Meaning
ReadWriteOnce (RWO) One node, read-write
ReadOnlyMany (ROX) Many nodes, read-only
ReadWriteMany (RWX) Many nodes, read-write
ReadWriteOncePod (RWOP) One pod, read-write (v1.29+ stable)

YAML Cheat Sheet · Troubleshooting Cheat Sheet

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