How kube-apiserver knows where is kubelet service/process running in worker node?

12/30/2019

I have bootstraped (kubernetes the hard way by kelseyhightower) a k8s cluster in virtual box with 2 master(s) and 2 worker(s) and 1 LB for 2 master's kube-apiserver. BTW, kubelet is not running in master, only in worker node. Now cluster is up and running but I am not able to understand how kube-apiserver on master is connecting to kubelet to fetch the node's metric data etc. Could you please let me in details?

-- Diptendu Tan
kube-apiserver
kubelet
kubernetes

1 Answer

12/30/2019

Kubernetes API server is not aware of Kubelets but Kubelets are aware of Kubernetes API server. Kubelet registers the node and reports metrics to Kubernetes API Server which gets persisted into ETCD key value store. Kubelets use a kubeconfig file to communicate with Kubernetes API Server. This kubeconfig file has the endpoint of Kubernetes API server.The communication between Kubelet and Kubernetes API Server is secure with mutual TLS.

In Kubernetes the Hard Way Kubernetes control plane components - API Server, Scheduler, Controller Manager are run as systems unit and that's why there is no Kubelet running on the control plane nodes and if you perform kubectl get nodes command you would not see the master nodes listed as there is no Kubelet to register the master nodes.

A more standard way to deploy Kubernetes control plane components - API Server, Scheduler, Controller Manager is using Kubelet and not systemd units and that's how Kubeadm deploys Kubernetes control plane.

Official documentation on Master to Cluster communication.

-- Arghya Sadhu
Source: StackOverflow