Managing Node Taints

Taints enable a node to repel specific pods to prevent these pods from being scheduled to the node.

Procedure for Operations Performed on the Console

On the CCE console, you can also batch manage nodes' taints.

  1. Log in to the CCE console and click the cluster name to access the cluster console.

  2. In the navigation pane, choose Nodes. On the displayed page, click the Nodes tab, select the target node and click Labels and Taints in the upper left corner.

  3. In the displayed dialog box, click Add Operation under Batch Operation, and then choose Add/Update or Delete as well as Taint.

    Enter the key and value of the taint to be operated, choose a taint effect, and click OK.

  4. After the taint is added, check the added taint in node data.

Procedure for Operations Performed Through kubectl

A taint is a key-value pair associated with an effect. The following effects are available:

  • NoSchedule: No pod will be scheduled onto the node unless it has a matching toleration. Existing pods will not be evicted from the node.

  • PreferNoSchedule: Kubernetes prevents pods that cannot tolerate this taint from being scheduled onto the node.

  • NoExecute: If the pod has been running on a node, the pod will be evicted from the node. If the pod has not been running on a node, the pod will not be scheduled onto the node.

To add a taint to a node, run the kubectl taint node nodename command as follows:

$ kubectl get node
NAME             STATUS   ROLES    AGE    VERSION
192.168.10.170   Ready    <none>   73d    v1.19.8-r1-CCE21.4.1.B003
192.168.10.240   Ready    <none>   4h8m   v1.19.8-r1-CCE21.6.1.2.B001
$ kubectl taint node 192.168.10.240 key1=value1:NoSchedule
node/192.168.10.240 tainted

To view the taint configuration, run the describe and get commands as follows:

$ kubectl describe node 192.168.10.240
Name:               192.168.10.240
...
Taints:             key1=value1:NoSchedule
...
$ kubectl get node 192.168.10.240 -oyaml
apiVersion: v1
...
spec:
  providerID: 06a5ea3a-0482-11ec-8e1a-0255ac101dc2
  taints:
  - effect: NoSchedule
    key: key1
    value: value1
...

To remove a taint, add a hyphen (-) at the end of the command for adding a taint, as shown in the following example:

$ kubectl taint node 192.168.10.240 key1=value1:NoSchedule-
node/192.168.10.240 untainted
$ kubectl describe node 192.168.10.240
Name:               192.168.10.240
...
Taints:             <none>
...

Configuring a Node Scheduling Policy in One-Click Mode

You can configure a node to be unschedulable on the console. Then, CCE will add a taint with key node.kubernetes.io/unschedulable and the NoSchedule setting to the node. After a node is set to be unschedulable, new pods cannot be scheduled to this node, but pods running on the node are not affected.

  1. Log in to the CCE console and click the cluster name to access the cluster console.

  2. In the navigation pane, choose Nodes. On the displayed page, click the Nodes tab.

  3. In the node list, locate the target node and choose More > Disable Scheduling in the Operation column.

  4. In the dialog box that is displayed, click Yes to configure the node to be unschedulable.

    This operation will add a taint to the node. You can use kubectl to view the content of the taint.

    $ kubectl describe node 192.168.10.240
    ...
    Taints:             node.kubernetes.io/unschedulable:NoSchedule
    ...
    
  5. Go back to the node list, locate the target node, and choose More > Enable Scheduling. Then, the node changes to be schedulable.

System Taints

When some issues occurred on a node, Kubernetes automatically adds a taint to the node. The built-in taints are as follows:

  • node.kubernetes.io/not-ready: The node is not ready. The node Ready value is False.

  • node.kubernetes.io/unreachable: The node controller cannot access the node. The node Ready value is Unknown.

  • node.kubernetes.io/memory-pressure: The node memory is approaching the upper limit.

  • node.kubernetes.io/disk-pressure: The node disk space is approaching the upper limit.

  • node.kubernetes.io/pid-pressure: The node PIDs are approaching the upper limit.

  • node.kubernetes.io/network-unavailable: The node network is unavailable.

  • node.kubernetes.io/unschedulable: The node cannot be scheduled.

  • node.cloudprovider.kubernetes.io/uninitialized: If an external cloud platform driver is specified when kubelet is started, kubelet adds a taint to the current node and marks it as unavailable. After a controller of cloud-controller-manager initializes the node, kubelet will delete the taint.