A workload is an application running on Kubernetes. Whether your workload is a single component or several that work together, on Kubernetes you run it inside a set of pods. In Kubernetes, a Pod represents a set of running containers on your cluster.

Kubernetes pods have a defined lifecycle. For example, once a pod is running in your cluster then a critical fault on the node where that pod is running means that all the pods on that node will fail. Kubernetes treats that level of failure as final: you would need to create a new pod to recover, even if the node later becomes healthy.

However, to make life considerably easier, you don't need to manage each pod directly. Instead, you can use workload resources that manage a set of pods on your behalf. These resources configure controllers that make sure the right number of the right kind of pod are running, to match the state you specified.