annotation

Annotating Kubernetes Resources

Update the annotations on one or more resources

All Kubernetes objects support the ability to store additional data with the object as annotations. Annotations are key/value pairs that can be larger than labels and include arbitrary string values such as structured JSON. Tools and system extensions may use annotations to store their own data.

Command

$ kubectl annotate [--overwrite] (-f FILENAME | TYPE NAME) KEY_1=VAL_1 ... KEY_N=VAL_N [--resource-version=version]

Example

Current State

$ kubectl get pods
NAME                     READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
nginx-6db489d4b7-zcc8h   1/1     Running   0          5s

Command

$ kubectl annotate pods nginx-6db489d4b7-zcc8h description='standard gateway'

pod/nginx-6db489d4b7-zcc8h annotated

More Examples

# Update pod 'foo' with the annotation 'description' and the value 'my frontend'.
# If the same annotation is set multiple times, only the last value will be applied
kubectl annotate pods foo description='my frontend'

# Update a pod identified by type and name in "pod.json"
kubectl annotate -f pod.json description='my frontend'

# Update pod 'foo' with the annotation 'description' and the value 'my frontend running nginx', overwriting any
existing value.
kubectl annotate --overwrite pods foo description='my frontend running nginx'

# Update all pods in the namespace
kubectl annotate pods --all description='my frontend running nginx'

# Update pod 'foo' only if the resource is unchanged from version 1.
kubectl annotate pods foo description='my frontend running nginx' --resource-version=1

# Update pod 'foo' by removing an annotation named 'description' if it exists.
# Does not require the --overwrite flag.
kubectl annotate pods foo description-

Last modified September 23, 2020: docs update (b46eb86)