You can do this with a selector. Note that this is deleting the pods so you'll want to be sure they are running with a higher level construct like a deployment. And be sure your selector doesn't match pods you don't want to touch.

kubectl delete pods -l name=myLabel

Restart all deployments in a cluster (multiple namespaces)

kubectl get deployments --all-namespaces | tail +2 | awk '{ cmd=sprintf("kubectl rollout restart deployment -n %s %s", $1, $2) ; system(cmd) }'

One way

kubectl scale deploymennt <your-deployment-goes-here> --replicas=0

and then

kubectl scale deploymennt <your-deployment-goes-here> --replicas=1000

Another way:

Write a script that: 1. will acquire a list of all active pods that belong to specific deployment 2. issue kubectl delete pod <item-from-a-list> in a loop

Yet another way (works if your pods belong to a dedicated namespace 'foo'):

kubectl delete --all pods --namespace=foo

If all the pods belong to a specific namespace, you can delete them all with kubectl delete pods --all --namespace=foo to recreate them (this may cause downtime).

If all the pods are controlled by the same deployment, you can trigger a rolling restart with kubectl rollout restart deployment/my-deployment-name. †

Editing some deployment trivial value will also trigger a Rolling Update (possible no downtime) for all controlled pods (e.g., changing the terminationGracePeriodSeconds from 30 to 31).

If the pods are from multiple different deployments, here is a bash script that "refreshes" all pods in all deployments by namespace.

† rollout restart is only available on kubernetes v1.15+