<p>As a QA in our company I am daily user of kubernetes, and we use kubernetes job to create performance tests pods. One advantage of job, according to the <a href="https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/workloads/controllers/jobs-run-to-completion/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">docs</a>, is </p>

<blockquote>
  <p>to create one Job object in order to reliably run one Pod to completion</p>
</blockquote>

<p>But in our tests this feature will create infinite pods if previous ones fail, which will occupy resources of our team's shared cluster, and deleting such pods will take a lot of time. see this image:
<a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/6pjF2.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/6pjF2.png" alt="enter image description here"></a></p>

<p>Currently the job manifest is like this:</p>

<pre><code>   {
  "apiVersion": "batch/v1",
  "kind": "Job",
  "metadata": {
    "name": "upgradeperf",
    "namespace": "ntg6-grpc26-tts"
  },
  "spec": {
    "template": {
      "spec": {
        "containers": [
          {
            "name": "upgradeperfjob",
            "image":
"mycompany.com:5000/ncs-cd-qa/upgradeperf:0.1.1",
            "command": [
              "python",
              "/jmeterwork/jmeter.py",
              "-gu",
              "git@gitlab-pri-eastus2.dev.mycompany.net:mobility-ncs-tools/tts-cdqa-tool.git",
              "-gb",
              "upgradeperf",
          "-t",
              "JMeter/testcases/ttssvc/JMeterTestPlan_ttssvc_cmpsize.jmx",
          "-JtestDataFile",
              "JMeter/testcases/ttssvc/testData/avaml_opus.csv",
          "-JthreadNum",
              "3",
          "-JthreadLoopCount",
              "1500",
          "-JresultsFile",
              "results_upgradeperf_cavaml_opus_t3_l1500.csv",
          "-Jhost",
          "mtl-blade32-03.mycompany.com",
          "-Jport",
          "28416"
            ]
          }
        ],
        "restartPolicy": "Never",
        "imagePullSecrets": [
          {
            "name": "docker-registry-secret"
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  }
}
</code></pre>

<p>In some cases, such as misconfiguring of ip/ports, 'reliably run one Pod to completion' is impossible and recreating pods is waste of time and resource. 
  So is it possible, and how to limit kubernetes job to create a maxium number(say 3) of pods if always fail?</p>

Lei Yang
<p>Depending on your kubernetes version, you can resolve this problem with these methods:</p>

<ol>
<li><p>set the option: <code>restartPolicy: OnFailure</code>, then the failed container will be restarted  in the same Pod, so you will not get lots of failed Pods, instead you will get a Pod with lots of restart.</p></li>
<li><p>From Kubernetes 1.8 on, There is a parameter <code>backoffLimit</code> to control the restart policy of failed job. This parameter defines the retry times of the job before treating the job to be failed, default 6 times. For  this parameter to work you must set the parameter <code>restartPolicy: Never</code> .</p></li>
</ol>
