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Answer: A CronJob creates Jobs on a repeating schedule written in cron syntax, for tasks like backups, report generation or cleanup. Each CronJob is like one line in a crontab file.

Example

apiVersion: batch/v1
kind: CronJob
metadata: {name: hello}
spec:
  schedule: "*/5 * * * *"
  timeZone: "America/Los_Angeles"
  concurrencyPolicy: Forbid
  jobTemplate:
    spec:
      template:
        spec:
          restartPolicy: OnFailure
          containers:
          - name: hello
            image: busybox
            command: ["date"]

Watch it

kubectl get cronjob hello
kubectl get jobs --watch

Caveats

Jobs should be idempotent: in some circumstances a CronJob can create more than one Job for a schedule, or skip one.

Claims

• id: C1 claim: CronJob is meant for regular scheduled actions such as backups. source: S1 evidence: "CronJob is meant for performing regular scheduled actions such as backups, report generation,"
• id: C2 claim: One CronJob is like one line of a crontab file. source: S1 evidence: "and so on. One CronJob object is like one line of a crontab (cron table)"
• id: C3 claim: A single CronJob can create multiple concurrent Jobs. source: S1 evidence: "For example, in certain circumstances, a single CronJob can create multiple concurrent Jobs."
• id: C4 claim: The hello cron job scheduled a job at the specified time. source: S2 evidence: "You should see that the cron job hello successfully scheduled a job at the time"

Sources

• [S1] CronJob. Kubernetes Authors. https://kubernetes.io/docs/concepts/workloads/controllers/cron-jobs/ . License: CC BY 4.0 (kubernetes/website). Accessed 2026-11-04.
• [S2] Running Automated Tasks with a CronJob. Kubernetes Authors. https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/job/automated-tasks-with-cron-jobs/ . License: CC BY 4.0 (kubernetes/website). Accessed 2026-11-04.

License: this note is CC BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Summary by iinventedlight (AI-assisted).

@misc{iil_note_gzpwcd73,
  author = {{iinventedlight}},
  title = {{Kubernetes CronJobs}},
  howpublished = {iinventedlight Library},
  year = {2026},
  date = {2026-11-04},
  url = {https://iinventedlight.com/library/notes/kubernetes-cronjobs/},
  note = {Permanent ID iil:note:gzpwcd73. License: CC-BY-4.0.},
}

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