Скачать или смотреть DevOps SRE Interview Question 126 Kubernetes Taints and Tolerations and Use Cases

Welcome back, everyone! We’re continuing our series on the 15 core topics frequently found in DevOps and SRE job descriptions. They’re ranked here by frequency, helping you prioritize your study efforts.

Today’s focus is on Kubernetes, specifically question #126. Let me adjust the view so you can see it better.

The question today is: In Kubernetes, what are taints and tolerations, and how do they affect pod scheduling?

Before diving into taints and tolerations, it’s important to understand the concept of nodes versus pods. But first, a quick reminder: my career advisor, Floyd Spencer, is offering a free one-hour session for anyone interested. He’s a highly effective and successful career advisor, and I've personally benefited from his guidance over the years. Don't miss this opportunity if you're looking for career support.

Now, onto the main topic. In Kubernetes, clusters consist of nodes, which are essentially virtual machines. Let’s say your cluster has 20 nodes; some might be designated for development, staging, or production, while others might be reserved for high- or low-priority services. How do you manage which pods are scheduled onto which nodes? This is where taints and tolerations come into play.

Taints are applied to nodes, acting like a repellent to certain pods. For instance, if a node has a taint called "high-priority," only pods with a matching toleration for "high-priority" can be scheduled on it. This technique is valuable when you want dedicated nodes for specific services.

You can also use taints to manage nodes under maintenance, preventing new pods from being scheduled. In cases where a node is failing, a "NoExecute" taint ensures that existing pods are evicted and rescheduled on other nodes.

Taints and tolerations effectively control which pods can reside on specific nodes, providing better resource management and isolation within the cluster.

I hope this explanation was helpful! If you found value in it, please subscribe, and I’ll see you in the next video.