Assignment

The Nautilus DevOps team is diving into Kubernetes for application management. One team member has a task to create a pod according to the details below:

Create a pod named pod-httpd using the httpd image with the latest tag. Ensure to specify the tag as httpd:latest.

Set the app label to httpd_app, and name the container as httpd-container.

Note: The kubectl utility on the jump-host has been configured to work with the Kubernetes cluster.

Solution

Kubernetes Pod — `pod-httpd`

A single pod running the httpd:latest image, with an app: httpd_app label and a named container. Applied inline via a heredoc — no manifest file on disk.

Apply (heredoc → kubectl)

kubectl apply -f - <<'EOF'
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: pod-httpd
  labels:
    app: httpd_app
spec:
  containers:
    - name: httpd-container
      image: httpd:latest
EOF

How it works

The heredoc apply pattern

kubectl apply -f - — the -f - tells kubectl to read the manifest from stdin instead of a file. The heredoc feeds the YAML straight in, so nothing is written to disk.
<<'EOF' (delimiter quoted) — quoting EOF disables shell expansion inside the body, so any $VAR, backticks, or $(...) in a manifest stay literal rather than being interpreted by the shell. For Kubernetes YAML this is almost always what you want. Use unquoted <<EOF only when you deliberately want the shell to interpolate a variable into the manifest before it reaches kubectl.
Indentation still matters — YAML inside the heredoc must keep exact indentation, spaces not tabs.

The manifest, field by field

apiVersion: v1 / kind: Pod — a Pod is a core (v1) object, the smallest deployable unit in Kubernetes: one or more containers sharing a network namespace and storage.
metadata.name: pod-httpd — the pod's name, exactly as required.
metadata.labels.app: httpd_app — the required label. Labels are key/value tags used by selectors (Services, ReplicaSets, kubectl get -l) to target the pod, so kubectl get pods -l app=httpd_app will match this pod.
spec.containers — the list of containers in the pod, here a single entry:
- name: httpd-container — the container name, exactly as required. This is the name you'd pass to kubectl logs / kubectl exec -c.
- image: httpd:latest — the Apache HTTP Server image at the latest tag, specified explicitly as required. Writing just httpd would default the tag to latest anyway, but the task asks for the tag to be stated, so it's spelled out.

Label vs. name — two different things

Easy to conflate, but distinct:

the pod name (pod-httpd) uniquely identifies the pod in its namespace, and
the app label (httpd_app) is a selector tag that can be shared across many pods.

They live in different manifest fields (metadata.name vs metadata.labels) and serve different purposes.

Verify

# Pod is running with the correct name
kubectl get pod pod-httpd -o wide

# Label is set
kubectl get pod pod-httpd --show-labels

# Container name and image are correct
kubectl get pod pod-httpd \
  -o jsonpath='{.spec.containers[0].name}{"  "}{.spec.containers[0].image}{"\n"}'

Expected — pod-httpd in Running status, labels showing app=httpd_app, and the jsonpath printing httpd-container httpd:latest.

If the pod sits in ImagePullBackOff, the node may be offline or rate-limited on the pull. kubectl describe pod pod-httpd shows the pull events under Events:.

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