☁️ Free practice test question from: KCNA (KCNA)

In a Kubernetes cluster, the control plane nodes run the management components that coordinate the entire cluster (like the API server, scheduler, and controller manager). Worker nodes are where your application workloads run. However, worker node components (kubelet and kube-proxy) also exist on control plane nodes.
The primary reason for this is that the control plane components themselves are typically deployed as static pods, which are managed by the kubelet.

The kubelet is the primary "node agent" that runs on every node in the cluster. Its job is to ensure that containers are running in a Pod.

On control plane nodes, the kubelet manages special pods called "static pods" that contain the control plane components:

• kube-apiserver

• kube-controller-manager

• kube-scheduler

• etcd (in some configurations)

These static pods are defined by manifest files placed in a specific directory that the kubelet watches.