Essential kubectl Commands Cheat Sheet

Stop memorizing every flag! I've put together a handy kubectl cheat sheet for managing pods, deployments, and debugging. Originally published on devopsstart.com.

Pod Management

Command	Description
kubectl get pods	List all pods in current namespace
kubectl get pods -A	List pods across all namespaces
kubectl describe pod <name>	Show detailed pod information
kubectl delete pod <name>	Delete a specific pod
kubectl logs <pod>	View pod logs
kubectl logs <pod> -f	Stream pod logs
kubectl exec -it <pod> -- sh	Open shell in pod

Deployments

Command	Description
kubectl get deployments	List all deployments
kubectl scale deploy <name> --replicas=3	Scale a deployment
kubectl rollout status deploy/<name>	Check rollout status
kubectl rollout undo deploy/<name>	Rollback a deployment
kubectl set image deploy/<name> <container>=<image>	Update container image

Services and Networking

Command	Description
kubectl get svc	List all services
kubectl get ingress	List all ingress resources
kubectl port-forward svc/<name> 8080:80	Forward local port to service
kubectl get endpoints	List service endpoints

Debugging

Command	Description
kubectl get events --sort-by=.metadata.creationTimestamp	View cluster events
kubectl top pods	Show pod resource usage
kubectl top nodes	Show node resource usage
kubectl logs <pod> --previous	View logs from crashed container
kubectl describe node <name>	Check node conditions

Context and Config

Command	Description
kubectl config get-contexts	List all contexts
kubectl config use-context <name>	Switch context
kubectl config current-context	Show current context
kubectl get ns	List namespaces
kubectl config set-context --current --namespace=<ns>	Set default namespace