Kubernetes Clusters

Question 1

Explain the components of a Kubernetes cluster and their roles

Answer 1

🏗️ Worker machine (aka nodes) run containerized applications
📦 Pods are components of the application workload
👷‍♀️Control plane manages the worker nodes and the Pods

Question 2

What is the significance of the “Control Plane” in a Kubernetes cluster?

Answer 2

• makes global decisions about the cluster (like scheduling)
• detects and responds to cluster events.

Question 3

Describe the main components of the Control Plane and their respective responsibilities in ensuring the proper functioning of the cluster

Answer 3

📑 kube-apiserver: exposes the Kubernetes API
🗄️ etcd: key value store for cluster data (requires backup plan)
⏲️ kube-scheduler: watches for newly created Pods with no assigned node, and selects a node for them to run on
🪡 kube-controller-manager: runs controller processes
☁️ cloud-controller-manager: links your cluster into your cloud provider’s API and manages communication with cloud provider

Question 4

Discuss the concept of “Node” in Kubernetes. What are worker nodes, and what role do they play in the cluster?

Answer 4

• runs the application in a cluster
• reports to a control plane.
• process data stored in the cluster
• handle networking traffic inside and outside of the cluster

Question 5

How can you scale the number of worker nodes dynamically to accommodate varying workloads?

Answer 5

Cluster autoscaler: horizontal scaling, helps manage the costs of running Kubernetes clusters on a cloud provider platform