Kubernetes Practical By Samson Tanimawo, PhD Published Apr 1, 2026 4 min read

Rolling Update vs Recreate

Two deployment strategies. When to use each.

RollingUpdate

Default. Replace pods one at a time.

Zero downtime; slow.

Recreate

All down; all up. Fast but causes outage.

Use only when rolling cannot work.

When recreate

Stateful migrations that cannot have mixed versions.

Rare; default to rolling.