Have you got a version of 17.6.2? If so I would try that and see if that solves the issue. If it does it could be Umbraco and not Kubernetes
Are you hitting Kubernetes resource limits. It does feel like, everything is working but then something is having a hiccup and not quite completing.
ChatGTP suggest this which I think is a good idea
1. The NuCache Desync on Pod Restarts
The root cause is usually a NuCache (the internal memory/database cache) desynchronization that triggers when a Kubernetes pod restarts. [1]
- The Cause: If your pod experiences minor node maintenance, an idle downscale, or restarts due to a memory limit breach, Umbraco boots up and attempts to reconstruct its routing cache. Bug reports for recent minor upgrades of Umbraco 17 show that during a startup/maintenance restart, the cache initialization can drop the links/URLs for randomly selected nodes (often pages updated or scheduled since the last major upgrade). [1]
- How to fix:
- Ensure your pod has a Persistent Volume Claim (PVC) mapped to
/umbraco/Data/so that the local NuCache files (NuCache.Content.db) survive pod restarts rather than forcing a broken cold-rebuild every time the container spins up.
- Ensure your pod has a Persistent Volume Claim (PVC) mapped to
Review K8s Restarts: Run kubectl get pods. Look at the RESTARTS column. If that number is greater than 0, your unpublishing events line up exactly with whenever Kubernetes kills and brings back the pod.