Before a weekend control-plane upgrade, a city platform team wants durable recovery for cluster state. What lifecycle action should they take?
Select an answer to reveal the explanation.
Short Explanation
Upgrades without an etcd snapshot are like remodeling without photos of the wiring—good luck putting it back. Grab a snapshot of etcd before you touch the control plane so the API object world can be restored if Friday goes sideways. App YAML exports help, but they are not the same as the cluster’s source of truth in etcd.
Full Explanation
etcd holds Kubernetes API object state for the cluster. Snapshotting etcd before risky upgrades or maintenance is a standard lifecycle hygiene step so administrators can restore control-plane state. Manifest exports alone do not capture secrets at rest, leases, and other live objects the way an etcd snapshot does.