Understand Kubernetes Scheduling

Understand Kubernetes Scheduling

What is Kubernetes Scheduling?

  • The Kubernetes Scheduler is a core component of Kubernetes: After a user or a controller creates a Pod, the Kubernetes Scheduler, monitoring the Object Store for unassigned Pods, will assign the Pod to a Node. Then, the Kubelet, monitoring the Object Store for assigned Pods, will execute the Pod.

what is the scheduler for?

The Kubernetes scheduler is in charge of scheduling pods onto nodes. Basically it works like this:

  1. You create a pod
  2. The scheduler notices that the new pod you created doesn’t have a node assigned to it
  3. The scheduler assigns a node to the pod

It’s not responsible for actually running the pod – that’s the kubelet’s job. So it basically just needs to make sure every pod has a node assigned to it. Easy, right?

Kubernetes in general has this idea of a “controller”. A controller’s job is to:

  • look at the state of the system
  • notice ways in which the actual state does not match the desired state (like “this pod needs to be assigned a node”)
  • repeat

The scheduler is a kind of controller. There are lots of different controllers and they all have different jobs and operate independently.

How Kubernetes Selects The Right node?

What is node affinity ?

  • In simple words this allows you to tell Kubernetes to schedule pods only to specific subsets of nodes.
  • The initial node affinity mechanism in early versions of Kubernetes was the nodeSelector field in the pod specification. The node had to include all the labels specified in that field to be eligible to become the target for the pod.

nodeSelector

Steps

$ kubectl label nodes node2 mynode=worker-1
$ kubectl apply -f pod-nginx.yaml
  • We have label on the node with node name,in this case i have given node2 as mynode=worker-1 label.

Viewing Your Pods

$ kubectl get pods --output=wide

$ kubectl describe po nginx
Name:               nginx
Namespace:          default
Priority:           0
PriorityClassName:  <none>
Node:               node2/192.168.0.17
Start Time:         Mon, 30 Dec 2019 16:40:53 +0000
Labels:             env=test
Annotations:        kubectl.kubernetes.io/last-applied-configuration:
                      {"apiVersion":"v1","kind":"Pod","metadata":{"annotations":{},"labels":{"env":"test"},"name":"nginx","namespace":"default"},"spec":{"contai...
Status:             Pending
IP:
Containers:
  nginx:
    Container ID:
    Image:          nginx
    Image ID:
    Port:           <none>
    Host Port:      <none>
    State:          Waiting
      Reason:       ContainerCreating
    Ready:          False
    Restart Count:  0
    Environment:    <none>
    Mounts:
      /var/run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount from default-token-qpgxq (ro)
Conditions:
  Type              Status
  Initialized       True
  Ready             False
  ContainersReady   False
  PodScheduled      True
Volumes:
  default-token-qpgxq:
    Type:        Secret (a volume populated by a Secret)
    SecretName:  default-token-qpgxq
    Optional:    false
QoS Class:       BestEffort
Node-Selectors:  mynode=worker-1
Tolerations:     node.kubernetes.io/not-ready:NoExecute for 300s
                 node.kubernetes.io/unreachable:NoExecute for 300s
Events:
  Type    Reason     Age   From               Message
  ----    ------     ----  ----               -------
  Normal  Scheduled  7s    default-scheduler  Successfully assigned default/nginx to node2
  Normal  Pulling    3s    kubelet, node2     Pulling image "nginx"
[node1 Scheduler101]$
  • You can check in above output Node-Selectors: mynode=worker-1

Deleting the Pod

$ kubectl delete -f pod-nginx.yaml
pod "nginx" deleted

Node affinity

  • Node affinity is conceptually similar to nodeSelector – it allows you to constrain which nodes your pod is eligible to be scheduled on, based on labels on the node.

  • There are currently two types of node affinity.

  1. requiredDuringSchedulingIgnoredDuringExecution (Preferred during scheduling, ignored during execution; we are also known as “hard” requirements)
  2. preferredDuringSchedulingIgnoredDuringExecution (Required during scheduling, ignored during execution; we are also known as “soft” requirements)

Steps

$ kubectl label nodes node2 mynode=worker-1
$ kubectl label nodes node3 mynode=worker-3
$ kubectl apply -f pod-with-node-affinity.yaml

Viewing Your Pods

$ kubectl get pods --output=wide
NAME                 READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE     IP          NODE          NOMINATED NODE   READINESS GATES
with-node-affinity   1/1     Running   0          9m46s   10.44.0.1   kube-slave1   <none>           <none>


$ kubectl describe po
Name:               with-node-affinity
Namespace:          default
Priority:           0
PriorityClassName:  <none>
Node:               node3/192.168.0.16
Start Time:         Mon, 30 Dec 2019 19:28:33 +0000
Labels:             <none>
Annotations:        kubectl.kubernetes.io/last-applied-configuration:
                      {"apiVersion":"v1","kind":"Pod","metadata":{"annotations":{},"name":"with-node-affinity","namespace":"default"},"spec":{"affinity":{"nodeA...
Status:             Pending
IP:
Containers:
  nginx:
    Container ID:
    Image:          nginx
    Image ID:
    Port:           <none>
    Host Port:      <none>
    State:          Waiting
      Reason:       ContainerCreating
    Ready:          False
    Restart Count:  0
    Environment:    <none>
    Mounts:
      /var/run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount from default-token-qpgxq (ro)
Conditions:
  Type              Status
  Initialized       True
  Ready             False
  ContainersReady   False
  PodScheduled      True
Volumes:
  default-token-qpgxq:
    Type:        Secret (a volume populated by a Secret)
    SecretName:  default-token-qpgxq
    Optional:    false
QoS Class:       BestEffort
Node-Selectors:  <none>
Tolerations:     node.kubernetes.io/not-ready:NoExecute for 300s
                 node.kubernetes.io/unreachable:NoExecute for 300s
Events:
  Type    Reason     Age   From               Message
  ----    ------     ----  ----               -------
  Normal  Scheduled  26s   default-scheduler  Successfully assigned default/with-node-affinity to node3
  Normal  Pulling    22s   kubelet, node3     Pulling image "nginx"
  Normal  Pulled     20s   kubelet, node3     Successfully pulled image "nginx"
  Normal  Created    2s    kubelet, node3     Created container nginx
  Normal  Started    0s    kubelet, node3     Started container nginx

Step Cleanup

Finally you can clean up the resources you created in your cluster:

$ kubectl delete -f pod-with-node-affinity.yaml

Anti-Node Affinity ?

  • Some scenarios require that you don’t use one or more nodes except for particular pods. Think of the nodes that host your monitoring application.
  • Those nodes shouldn’t have many resources due to the nature of their role. Thus, if other pods than those which have the monitoring app are scheduled to those nodes, they hurt monitoring and also degrades the application they are hosting.
  • In such a case, you need to use node anti-affinity to keep pods away from a set of nodes.

Steps

$ kubectl label nodes node2 mynode=worker-1
$ kubectl label nodes node3 mynode=worker-3
$ kubectl apply -f pod-anti-node-affinity.yaml

Viewing Your Pods

$ kubectl get pods --output=wide
NAME    READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE     IP          NODE    NOMINATED NODE   READINESS GATES
nginx   1/1     Running   0          2m37s   10.44.0.1   node2   <none>           <none>

Get nodes label detail

$ kubectl get nodes --show-labels | grep mynode
node2   Ready    <none>   166m   v1.14.9   beta.kubernetes.io/arch=amd64,beta.kubernetes.io/os=linux,kubernetes.io/arch=amd64,kubernetes.io/hostname=node2,kubernetes.io/os=linux,mynode=worker-1,role=dev
node3   Ready    <none>   165m   v1.14.9   beta.kubernetes.io/arch=amd64,beta.kubernetes.io/os=linux,kubernetes.io/arch=amd64,kubernetes.io/hostname=node3,kubernetes.io/os=linux,mynode=worker-3

Get pod describe

$ kubectl describe pods nginx
Name:               nginx
Namespace:          default
Priority:           0
PriorityClassName:  <none>
Node:               node2/192.168.0.17
Start Time:         Mon, 30 Dec 2019 19:02:46 +0000
Labels:             <none>
Annotations:        kubectl.kubernetes.io/last-applied-configuration:
                      {"apiVersion":"v1","kind":"Pod","metadata":{"annotations":{},"name":"nginx","namespace":"default"},"spec":{"affinity":{"nodeAffinity":{"re...
Status:             Running
IP:                 10.44.0.1
Containers:
  nginx:
    Container ID:   docker://2bdc20d79c360e1cd857eeb9bbb9424c726b2133e78f25bf4587e0befe3fbcc7
    Image:          nginx
    Image ID:       docker-pullable://nginx@sha256:b2d89d0a210398b4d1120b3e3a7672c16a4ba09c2c4a0395f18b9f7999b768f2
    Port:           <none>
    Host Port:      <none>
    State:          Running
      Started:      Mon, 30 Dec 2019 19:03:07 +0000
    Ready:          True
    Restart Count:  0
    Environment:    <none>
    Mounts:
      /var/run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount from default-token-qpgxq (ro)
Conditions:
  Type              Status
  Initialized       True
  Ready             True
  ContainersReady   True
  PodScheduled      True
Volumes:
  default-token-qpgxq:
    Type:        Secret (a volume populated by a Secret)
    SecretName:  default-token-qpgxq
    Optional:    false
QoS Class:       BestEffort
Node-Selectors:  <none>
Tolerations:     node.kubernetes.io/not-ready:NoExecute for 300s
                 node.kubernetes.io/unreachable:NoExecute for 300s
Events:
  Type    Reason     Age   From               Message
  ----    ------     ----  ----               -------
  Normal  Scheduled  60s   default-scheduler  Successfully assigned default/nginx to node2
  Normal  Pulling    56s   kubelet, node2     Pulling image "nginx"
  Normal  Pulled     54s   kubelet, node2     Successfully pulled image "nginx"
  Normal  Created    40s   kubelet, node2     Created container nginx
  Normal  Started    39s   kubelet, node2     Started container nginx
  • Adding another key to the matchExpressions with the operator NotIn will avoid scheduling the nginx pods on any node labelled worker-1.

Step Cleanup

Finally you can clean up the resources you created in your cluster:

$ kubectl delete -f pod-anti-node-affinity.yaml

What is Node taints and tolerations ?

  • This Kubernetes feature allows users to mark a node (taint the node) so that no pods can be scheduled to it, unless a pod explicitly tolerates the taint.

  • When you taint a node, it is automatically excluded from pod scheduling. When the schedule runs the predicate tests on a tainted node, they’ll fail unless the pod has toleration for that node.

  • Like last monitoring example: Let assume new member joins the development team, writes a Deployment for her application, but forgets to exclude the monitoring nodes from the target nodes? Kubernetes administrators need a way to repel pods from nodes without having to modify every pod definition.

Steps

$ kubectl label nodes node2 role=dev
$ kubectl label nodes node3 role=dev

$ kubectl taint nodes node2 role=dev:NoSchedule
node/node2 tainted
$ kubectl apply -f pod-taint-node.yaml

Viewing Your Pods

$ kubectl get pods --output=wide

Get nodes label detail

[node1 Scheduler101]$ kubectl get nodes --show-labels|grep mynode |grep role
node2   Ready    <none>   175m   v1.14.9   beta.kubernetes.io/arch=amd64,beta.kubernetes.io/os=linux,kubernetes.io/arch=amd64,kubernetes.io/hostname=node2,kubernetes.io/os=linux,mynode=worker-1,role=dev
node3   Ready    <none>   175m   v1.14.9   beta.kubernetes.io/arch=amd64,beta.kubernetes.io/os=linux,kubernetes.io/arch=amd64,kubernetes.io/hostname=node3,kubernetes.io/os=linux,mynode=worker-3,role=dev

Get pod describe

$ kubectl describe pods nginx
Name:               nginx
Namespace:          default
Priority:           0
PriorityClassName:  <none>
Node:               node3/192.168.0.16
Start Time:         Mon, 30 Dec 2019 19:13:45 +0000
Labels:             <none>
Annotations:        kubectl.kubernetes.io/last-applied-configuration:
                      {"apiVersion":"v1","kind":"Pod","metadata":{"annotations":{},"name":"nginx","namespace":"default"},"spec":{"affinity":{"nodeAffinity":{"re...
Status:             Running
IP:                 10.36.0.1
Containers:
  nginx:
    Container ID:   docker://57d032f4358be89e2fcad7536992b175503565af82ce4f66f4773f6feaf58356
    Image:          nginx
    Image ID:       docker-pullable://nginx@sha256:b2d89d0a210398b4d1120b3e3a7672c16a4ba09c2c4a0395f18b9f7999b768f2
    Port:           <none>
    Host Port:      <none>
    State:          Running
      Started:      Mon, 30 Dec 2019 19:14:45 +0000
    Ready:          True
    Restart Count:  0
    Environment:    <none>
    Mounts:
      /var/run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount from default-token-qpgxq (ro)
Conditions:
  Type              Status
  Initialized       True
  Ready             True
  ContainersReady   True
  PodScheduled      True
Volumes:
  default-token-qpgxq:
    Type:        Secret (a volume populated by a Secret)
    SecretName:  default-token-qpgxq
    Optional:    false
QoS Class:       BestEffort
Node-Selectors:  <none>
Tolerations:     node.kubernetes.io/not-ready:NoExecute for 300s
                 node.kubernetes.io/unreachable:NoExecute for 300s
Events:
  Type    Reason     Age   From               Message
  ----    ------     ----  ----               -------
  Normal  Scheduled  105s  default-scheduler  Successfully assigned default/nginx to node3
  Normal  Pulling    101s  kubelet, node3     Pulling image "nginx"
  Normal  Pulled     57s   kubelet, node3     Successfully pulled image "nginx"
  Normal  Created    47s   kubelet, node3     Created container nginx
  Normal  Started    45s   kubelet, node3     Started container nginx
  • Deployed pod on node3.

Step Cleanup

Finally you can clean up the resources you created in your cluster:

$ kubectl delete -f pod-tain-node.yaml

Tolerations

  • A toleration is a way of ignoring a taint during scheduling. Tolerations aren’t applied to nodes, but rather the pods. So, in the example above, if we apply a toleration to the PodSpec, we could “tolerate” the slow disks on that node and still use it.

Steps

$ kubectl apply -f pod-tolerations-node.yaml

Viewing Your Pods

$ kubectl get pods --output=wide

Which Node Is This Pod Running On?

$ kubectl describe pods nginx
Name:               nginx
Namespace:          default
Priority:           0
PriorityClassName:  <none>
Node:               node3/192.168.0.16
Start Time:         Mon, 30 Dec 2019 19:20:35 +0000
Labels:             env=test
Annotations:        kubectl.kubernetes.io/last-applied-configuration:
                      {"apiVersion":"v1","kind":"Pod","metadata":{"annotations":{},"labels":{"env":"test"},"name":"nginx","namespace":"default"},"spec":{"contai...
Status:             Pending
IP:
Containers:
  nginx:
    Container ID:
    Image:          nginx:1.7.9
    Image ID:
    Port:           <none>
    Host Port:      <none>
    State:          Waiting
      Reason:       ContainerCreating
    Ready:          False
    Restart Count:  0
    Environment:    <none>
    Mounts:
      /var/run/secrets/kubernetes.io/serviceaccount from default-token-qpgxq (ro)
Conditions:
  Type              Status
  Initialized       True
  Ready             False
  ContainersReady   False
  PodScheduled      True
Volumes:
  default-token-qpgxq:
    Type:        Secret (a volume populated by a Secret)
    SecretName:  default-token-qpgxq
    Optional:    false
QoS Class:       BestEffort
Node-Selectors:  <none>
Tolerations:     node.kubernetes.io/not-ready:NoExecute for 300s
                 node.kubernetes.io/unreachable:NoExecute for 300s
                 role=dev:NoSchedule
Events:
  Type    Reason     Age   From               Message
  ----    ------     ----  ----               -------
  Normal  Scheduled  4s    default-scheduler  Successfully assigned default/nginx to node3
  Normal  Pulling    1s    kubelet, node3     Pulling image "nginx:1.7.9

Step Cleanup

Finally you can clean up the resources you created in your cluster:

$ kubectl delete -f pod-tolerations-node.yaml
  • An important thing to notice, though, is that tolerations may enable a tainted node to accept a pod but it does not guarantee that this pod runs on that specific node.
  • In other words, the tainted node will be considered as one of the candidates for running our pod. However, if another node has a higher priority score, it will be chosen instead. For situations like this, you need to combine the toleration with nodeSelector or node affinity parameters.

Last modified February 6, 2023: Added Java and Go (634c865)