Kubernetes Myths: The Ultimate Production & Interview Guide

Mastering Kubernetes requires understanding not just how it works, but why it behaves the way it does—especially in production environments, complex clusters, and across different platforms.

This guide explores the most common production pitfalls, architectural misunderstandings, and operational nuances engineers encounter. While it can also help with tricky interview questions, the primary focus is on real-world cluster behavior and technical reality, giving you a deeper understanding of Kubernetes beyond tutorials.

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Jump to Section

• Core Kubernetes Myths
  • Architecture
  • Workloads
  • Networking
  • Scheduling
  • Storage
  • Security
  • Pods & Containers
• Platform Myths
  • Amazon EKS
  • Google GKE
• Ecosystem Myths
  • Container Images
  • Container Registry
  • Helm Chart
• Domain Myths
  • Application Development
  • DevOps
  • SRE

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Core Kubernetes Myths

These myths touch on the fundamental architecture and primitives of Kubernetes.

Architecture

• Myth: Control Plane Nodes Don’t Need a Container Runtime
• Myth: Kubelet is Exclusive to Worker Nodes
• Myth: Kubernetes Clusters Can't Function Without Kube-Proxy
• Myth: Kubernetes Networking Works Fine Without a CNI Plugin
• Myth: Garbage collector deletes images as soon as pods stop using them
• Myth: Image Garbage collector runs only when disk usage crosses a High-Threshold
• Myth: Kubelet can modify any Kubernetes object through the API server

Workloads

• Myth: Kubernetes automatically rolls back failed deployments
• Myth: DaemonSet always schedules pods on all nodes
• Myth: Rolling Updates Are Only Supported by Deployments
• Myth: Deployment Supports All Pod Restart Policies
• Myth: K8s Injects Svc Info Into A Pods Env Var
• Myth: Kubernetes Automatically Deletes Old ReplicaSets

Networking

• Myth: ClusterIP Service is Only for Internal Traffic
• Myth: ClusterIP Services Always Use Round-Robin Load Balancing
• Myth: NodePort Service Always Exposes the Application to the Internet
• Myth: kube_proxy_assign_IP_address_to_Pods
• Myth: kubectl_port-forward_svc_sends_traffic_to_a_service

Scheduling

• Myth: A Higher-Priority Pod Will Always Preempt a Lower-Priority Pod
• Myth: Kubernetes Has a Concept of Node Anti-Affinity
• Myth: Kubernetes Scheduler Considers Resource Limits for Scheduling
• Myth: Pod memory requests are only used for scheduling

Storage

• Myth: Kubernetes Cluster Can Have Only One Default StorageClass
• Myth: Kubernetes PersistentVolumeClaim Can Be Resized
• Myth: ReadWriteOnce mode allows only a single Pod to access the volume

Security

• Myth: Kubernetes Namespaces Provide Complete Isolation
• Myth: Kubernetes Service Accounts Pull Container Images
• Myth: Pod Security Admission enforces security on running Pods

Pods & Containers

• Myth: Pods Don’t Consume Compute Resources Because They Are Logical
• Myth: Kubernetes Has Only One Pod Type
• Myth: Init Containers can run in any order or in parallel
• Myth: Kubernetes Pods Always Need a Service Account
• Myth: All Pods Are Created Using the API Server and Scheduler
• Myth: CPU Requests Guarantee Reserved CPU for Containers
• Myth: Pause Container Always Runs with a fixed UID(65535)
• Myth: A UID must exist as a Linux user to run a container

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Platform Myths

Amazon EKS

• Myth: EKS Control Plane Performance Can't Be Tuned
• Myth: EKS Has a Fixed Maximum Pod Count per Node

Google GKE

• Myth: GKE Zonal Clusters Are Cheaper Than Regional Clusters
• Myth: GKE Clusters Without a Release Channel Are Never Auto-Upgraded

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Ecosystem Myths

Container Images

• Myth: Container images truly support build once deploy anywhere
• Myth: A Container Image Digest Uniquely Identifies One Image
• Myth: Dockerfile COPY preserves file ownership and permissions from the host

Container Registry

• Myth: OCI Registries Only Support Container Images
• Myth: Deleting a Tag Deletes the Image from the Registry
• Myth: OCI-Native Registries and OCI-Compliant Registries Are Different

Helm Chart

• Myth: Helm Charts Deploy Kubernetes Resources in Any Order
• Myth: Helm Tracks the Current State of Kubernetes Resources

Domain Myths

Application Development

• Myth: Applications Don’t Need Readiness or Liveness Probes
• Myth: Kubernetes Supports In-Place Application Upgrades

DevOps

• Myth: Complete application can be rolled back in Kubernetes
• Myth: The order of Kubernetes resource deployment does not matter

SRE

• Myth: Kubernetes Guarantees Application Self-Healing

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