What is kubelet?
The agent running on every Kubernetes worker node that manages pod lifecycle.
The kubelet is a process running on every node in a Kubernetes cluster. It watches the API server for Pods assigned to its node, then instructs the container runtime (containerd) to start, stop, and manage those containers. The kubelet reports node and pod status back to the API server, runs liveness and readiness probes, and enforces resource limits via cgroups. If the API server is down, the kubelet continues running its current pods.
Related Terms
More Kubernetes Terms
Admission Controller
A Kubernetes plugin that intercepts API requests before objects are persisted.
Auto Scaling
Automatically adjusting the number of compute resources based on demand.
ClusterIP
The default Kubernetes Service type that exposes a service on an internal cluster IP.
ConfigMap
A Kubernetes object for storing non-sensitive configuration data as key-value pairs.
Controller Manager
Kubernetes control plane component running control loops to maintain desired state.
CoreDNS
The default DNS server in Kubernetes clusters for service discovery.
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