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There are different ways to manually schedule a pod on a node. You may not want to rely on the Kubernetes built-in scheduler, you may not have a scheduler in your cluster, or you may want to schedule the pod yourself. Scheduling works like this:
  1. What to schedule? — Pod
  2. Which node to schedule?
  3. Schedule/bind pod to node

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How the scheduler uses nodeName

Every pod has a field called nodeName that is not set by default. Normally you do not set this field — Kubernetes auto-populates it. Here is how:
1

Identify unscheduled pods

The scheduler checks all pods and finds those where nodeName is not set.
2

Run the scheduling algorithm

The scheduler runs its algorithm to identify the right node for the pod.
3

Bind the pod

The scheduler sets nodeName to the chosen node name by creating a binding object.

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Scenario 1: No scheduler — set nodeName at creation time

If you do not have a scheduler in your cluster, deployed pods will remain in Pending state because nothing is monitoring and scheduling them. You can manually assign a pod to a node by specifying nodeName in the pod spec at creation time.
You can only specify nodeName at pod creation time. Kubernetes does not allow modifying this field on an existing pod.
sample.yaml
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: sample-pod
spec:
  containers:
    - name: ubuntu
      image: ubuntu
  nodeName: node01

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Scenario 2: Pod already exists — use a Binding object

If your pod is already created and you want to assign it to a node, you must create a Binding object and send a POST request to the pod’s binding API.
binding.yaml
apiVersion: v1
kind: Binding
metadata:
  name: sample-binding
target:
  apiVersion: v1
  kind: Node
  name: node03
You must convert the YAML to JSON format before sending the POST request.
curl -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -X POST \
  -d '{"apiVersion": "v1","kind": "Binding","metadata": {"name": "sample-binding"},"target": {"apiVersion": "v1","kind": "Node","name": "node03"}}' \
  http://{server-url}/api/v1/namespaces/{namespace}/pods/{pod-name}/binding

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