title: Kubernetes Pods vs Deployments in Google Cloud
body: <p>My apologies if this question sounds obvious, but the Kubernetes and Google cloud documentation is extremely confusing and contradictory in places.</p>
  
  <p>Anyway, I have pushed a Dockerized web-server to my private Google Container Registry. I want this container to be restarted if it dies, but I only need one single instance to be running at any given moment.  Moreover, there's a bunch of environment variables that need to be defined for the server to be correctly configured.</p>
  
  <p>I have already created a new cluster. But where do I go from here? Some tutorials say one should declare pod and service files, but then the next tutorial says one shouldn't declare pods directly but use deployments instead. The result is that I'm terribly confused.</p>
  
  <p>What's the best approach for this simple use case? Also, what is the recommended documentation for using Kubernetes in Google Cloud? (Google's official docs seem out of date.)</p>