Platform & DevOps·The orchestrator's model of the world
you said three replicas, and every time someone deletes one a fourth appears without anybody being asked.
Desired state
Also calledtarget state, spec
The recorded intent a controller works towards, held in the control plane rather than in anyone's head. Because it is authoritative, manual changes to the running system are not changes at all — they are deviations that will be undone, sometimes within seconds. This is the single most common shock for someone arriving from virtual machines, where what you did by hand stayed done.