Kubernetes Practical By Samson Tanimawo, PhD Published Apr 25, 2026 4 min read

PodDisruptionBudgets vs ReplicaSet Scaling

PDBs prevent voluntary disruption from killing too many pods. The pattern.

Setup

minAvailable: 1 or maxUnavailable: 25%.

Per Deployment, applies to evictions.

Multi-pod services. PDBs prevent rolling upgrades from breaking quorum.

Stateful sets, leader-elected services.

minAvailable: 100%. Blocks all evictions.

Drains and upgrades stop dead.