Title: Discussion 7 — The Case of the Misconfigured Model Path
Course: AIINFRA 101: Applied Infrastructure & Containerization > Section: Week 07 — Kubernetes Workloads: Deployments, Services, Config

💬 Discussion 7 — The Case of the Misconfigured Model Path (20 pts)

Prompt: You've deployed an AI inference Service backed by a Deployment whose Pods read the model path from a ConfigMap. A colleague updates the ConfigMap to point at a new model version — but they typo the path. The Service is still up, but requests start failing. Walk us through:

1. How would you detect that the ConfigMap update is the cause, rather than assuming it's an application bug? What would you check first, second, third?
2. Why won't the fix happen automatically just because you corrected the ConfigMap? (Think about what actually triggers a Pod to pick up new ConfigMap values.)
3. What's your recovery plan that avoids manually SSHing in or babysitting individual Pods — and how would you prevent this from happening again (e.g., validation, rollout practices, monitoring)?

Post your initial response (aim for specific commands/checks, not just generalities) by midweek. Then respond to two peers: Push on their detection strategy — did they check the right things in the right order? Or offer an alternative prevention strategy they didn't mention (e.g., readiness probes tied to config validation, a CI check on the ConfigMap, staged rollout of config changes).