Kubernetes: Run a docker image as pod or deployment?

 If you want to run a docker image inside kubernetes you can at least choose two ways:

1. pod
2. deployment
   

The first is done with these commands:

kubectl create namespace kuard
kubectl run kuard --image=gcr.io/kuar-demo/kuard-arm64:3 -n kuard --port 8080
kubectl expose pod kuard --type=NodePort --port=8080 -n kuard 

To  run the image inside a deployment the commands look very similar:

kubectl create namespace kuard2
kubectl create deployment kuard2 --image=gcr.io/kuar-demo/kuard-arm64:3 -n kuard2
kubectl expose deployment kuard2 -n kuard2 --type=NodePort --port=8080

Both is done with three commands, but what is the difference:

# kubectl get all -n kuard
NAME        READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
pod/kuard   1/1     Running   5          3d21h

NAME            TYPE       CLUSTER-IP       EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)          AGE
service/kuard   NodePort   10.152.183.227   <none>        8080:32047/TCP   3d20h

 versus

# kubectl get all -n kuard2
NAME                        READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
pod/kuard2-f8fd6497-4f7bc   1/1     Running   0          5m38s

NAME             TYPE       CLUSTER-IP       EXTERNAL-IP   PORT(S)          AGE
service/kuard2   NodePort   10.152.183.233   <none>        8080:32627/TCP   4m32s

NAME                     READY   UP-TO-DATE   AVAILABLE   AGE
deployment.apps/kuard2   1/1     1            1           5m39s

NAME                              DESIRED   CURRENT   READY   AGE
replicaset.apps/kuard2-f8fd6497   1         1         1       5m38s

So as you clearly can see, a deployment also configure a deployment and a replicaset in addition. But this is not really a deployment you want to do in such unconfigured way (remember: livenessProbes & readinessProbes can only be configured with kubctl apply + YAML). But you can get an template via 

kubectl get deployments kuard2 -n kuard2 -o yaml

which you can use for configuring all parameters - so this is easier than writing the complete YAML manually.