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Concept

Normally, the kubelet receives instructions from the kube-apiserver to deploy pods. The decision is made by the kube-scheduler, and information is stored in etcd. But what if there is no kube-apiserver, kube-scheduler, etcd, or master node? Can the node operate independently? Yes — the kubelet can run pods without the master, because it knows how to create and run pods on its own. To create static pods, you provide pod definition files to the kubelet from a specific directory (typically /etc/kubernetes/manifests).

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How kubelet manages static pods

  • kubelet regularly checks the manifest directory for pod definition files and creates the pods, keeping them alive.
  • kubelet tries to restart a pod if it stops running.
  • kubelet recreates the pod if the manifest file content changes.
  • kubelet deletes the pod if the manifest file is removed.
Static pods are managed by the kubelet without any intervention from the master. You can only create Pods as static pods — not Deployments or Services — because the kubelet only understands Pods.

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Why use static pods?

Static pods are used to deploy the Kubernetes control plane components (such as kube-apiserver, etcd, kube-controller-manager) as pods on a node. The kubelet ensures they stay running and automatically restarts them if they fail. This is exactly how kubeadm sets up a Kubernetes cluster. When you list pods in the kube-system namespace, you can see all control plane components running as pods.

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Configuring the manifest directory

Before creating static pods, configure the kubelet to watch a specific directory.
When inspecting an existing cluster, first check whether the --pod-manifest-path option is set in the kubelet.service file. If not, look for the --config option and then check the referenced config file for the staticPodPath setting.
Add --pod-manifest-path directly to the kubelet.service file, found in /etc/systemd/system/kubelet.service.d.
kubelet.service
ExecStart=/usr/bin/kubelet \\
  ....
  --pod-manifest-path=/etc/kubernetes/manifests \\
  ....

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Viewing static pods

When static pods are created, you can observe them with docker ps (since kubectl requires the kube-apiserver). Once the cluster is running, the kube-apiserver becomes aware of static pods and creates read-only mirror pod objects for them.
You can only view static pod details from the kube-apiserver — you cannot edit or delete them through it. To delete a static pod, remove its manifest file from the configured directory.
kubectl get pods
# output
NAME                 READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
static-pod-node01    1/1     Running   0          1m
Static pod names are automatically suffixed with the node name.

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Static pods vs. DaemonSets

Static PodDaemonSet
Created bykubeletkube-apiserver (DaemonSet Controller)
Use caseDeploy control plane componentsDeploy agents (monitoring, logging, etc.) on nodes
SchedulerIgnored by kube-schedulerIgnored by kube-scheduler
The kube-scheduler has no effect on pods created as static pods or managed by DaemonSets.

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