how to control pod termination speed in kubernetes

I have a k8s deployment that I update by doing kubectl apply -f spec.yml. I use the default update strategy.

Whenever I update, new pods get created and the old ones eventually get deleted.

This is what kubectl get pods looks like a few seconds after calling apply:

NAME                      READY     STATUS        RESTARTS   AGE
server-243710380-7s7g0    1/1       Terminating   0          9m
server-243710380-ffzv1    1/1       Terminating   0          9m
server-243710380-gfs3h    1/1       Terminating   0          9m
server-3561703442-24dxm   1/1       Running       0          13s
server-3561703442-7jlds   1/1       Running       0          8s
server-3561703442-x5xw1   1/1       Running       0          11s

As you can see, the ones in Terminating status hang around, typically for about 30 seconds, before really disappearing. This happens despite the new pods reaching running status within a few seconds.

How can I control the time the old pods remain in terminating status? Specifically, I want them to terminate as quickly as possible.

There is a default grace period for pod termination of 30 seconds. See: https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/workloads/pods/pod/#termination-of-pods.

You can customize the grace period setting terminationGracePeriodSeconds at the pod spec level.

StackExchange DevOps Q#3444, answer score: 8