Requests inform scheduling and resource allocation; limits constrain usage with resource-specific behavior. Accurate sizing requires observed demand.
Before you start
You should understand Pods, Deployments and Services. Read desired configuration separately from observed cluster state. Use a development cluster when trying changes, and inspect events and status rather than assuming that an accepted manifest means the workload is ready to serve traffic.
The practical goal is to reason through this situation: A Pod may remain pending when its requested resources fit no eligible node. Read the walkthrough first, then try the interview exercise before opening its answer. The important part is explaining the decision and its consequences, rather than remembering a definition alone.
Step-by-step walkthrough
Step 1: Inspect pending reasons
Read scheduling events before changing container limits blindly.
Step 2: Compare eligibility and capacity
Requests, affinities and node availability jointly constrain placement.
Step 3: Size from observation
Low requests can schedule successfully while creating contention later.
Worked scenario
A Pod may remain pending when its requested resources fit no eligible node.
A Pod requests 8Gi of memory while no eligible node has that allocatable capacity. Raising its limit does not solve scheduling. Reducing the request arbitrarily may get it placed but cause a capacity problem under real load; either provide suitable capacity or justify sizing from measured requirements.
Common mistake
Setting very low requests can produce excessive contention even if scheduling succeeds.
Verify the behavior
Compare requested resources with eligible node allocatable capacity and representative peak demand.
Interview exercise
Investigate a pending Pod.
Answer and reasoning
Read scheduling events and compare requests, node capacity, affinity and other placement constraints.
Continue learning
Compare the scenario with the Kubernetes interview questions and test your understanding with the Kubernetes MCQs. For terminology and implementation details, consult the reference material.