What Happens When You Manually Kill a Kubernetes Pod?

It really varies! If your replica size is just 1, then killing that pod will likely affect your service. Also, if the container doesn't shut down gracefully, it can disrupt the service more. If the application struggles with the load, losing a pod can send everything else tipping over. And a poorly set up load balancer can cause issues if you kill a pod and it’s not configured for cross-availability zones.

When you kill a pod, it sends a signal that allows the pod a grace period to terminate. If it doesn’t shut down in that time, it forces a kill. The impact depends on how well the application manages this. In the case of a single pod, you'll probably notice a brief downtime while it restarts. But if there are multiple pods, it’s less likely to be problematic.