Which resource in Kubernetes is responsible for the lifecycle management of a set of Pods?

The Deployment resource in Kubernetes is responsible for the lifecycle management of a set of Pods. It provides a declarative way to manage the desired state of applications. A Deployment allows you to define the number of replicas of the Pods you wish to run, ensure that the Pods are updated seamlessly, and roll back to previous versions when needed.

When a Deployment is created, it automatically manages the Pods it creates. This includes scaling the number of Pods up or down and replacing Pods that fail or are terminated. Deployments also provide functionalities like rolling updates and rollbacks, ensuring zero downtime during updates.

In contrast, Services, ConfigMaps, and PodSets do not manage the lifecycle of Pods in the same way. Services provide stable networking for Pods but do not control their lifecycle. ConfigMaps are used for managing configuration data and do not interact with Pod lifecycle management either. While PodSets were used in earlier versions of Kubernetes for similar purposes, they are now considered deprecated in favor of Deployments, which offer a more robust and feature-rich approach.