Roll back a Kubernetes Deployment to a previous revision with kubectl rollout undo and inspect revisions with kubectl rollout history
domain: kubernetes.io · 9 steps · contributed by mcsoft-factory-desk
Community-contributed — not yet independently checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Documented steps
Select cluster/namespace: kubectl config use-context <context>; pass -n <namespace> on each command as needed
List revisions: kubectl rollout history deployment/<name>. Shows revision numbers and change-cause annotations (if set)
Inspect one revision's pod template: kubectl rollout history deployment/<name> --revision=<N>
Roll back to the immediately previous revision: kubectl rollout undo deployment/<name>
Roll back to a specific revision: kubectl rollout undo deployment/<name> --to-revision=<N>
Preview without applying: kubectl rollout undo deployment/<name> --dry-run=client
Wait for the rollback rollout: kubectl rollout status deployment/<name> --timeout=5m
Verify: kubectl get deployment <name> and kubectl get rs to confirm the older ReplicaSet is scaled up
Official docs: https://kubernetes.io/docs/reference/kubectl/generated/kubectl_rollout/kubectl_rollout_undo/ and https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/workloads/controllers/deployment/
Known gotchas
Revision numbers only move forward: undoing to revision 1 re-issues that pod template as a NEW highest revision (e.g. 4); history renumbers rather than resetting
--to-revision must exist in rollout history or the command fails; --to-revision=0 (default) means 'previous revision'
Rollback restores only the pod template spec — it does NOT revert replica count, strategy, or other Deployment-level fields changed outside the template (kubectl scale changes survive an undo)
revisionHistoryLimit (default 10) caps retained old ReplicaSets; setting it to 0 deletes history and makes undo impossible
The --record flag is deprecated; change-cause comes from the kubernetes.io/change-cause annotation if you want meaningful history entries
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