How to Create Static Pods

To create static pods in Kubernetes:

Using manifests (which are simple yaml files) kept in the pod directory, by default - /etc/kubernetes/manifests/.

There are two ways to set this path:

1. In the kubelet service file, setting is pod-manifest-path and it can be set to anything.
2. Another way to set the path is to use config option and pass it path to a config yaml and in that set staticPodPath to the directory you want.

Sample file:

apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: static-busybox
  labels:
    role: test
spec:
  containers:
    - name: busybox
      image: busybox
      command: ['sleep', ':1000']

kubelet processes all files in the directory, so a copy will be read and created as well. fileCheckFrequency determines how long it takes for kubelet to see new changes, default 20s.

If the file has any errors, and the pod does not start, check journalctl -u kubelet -f | grep -i manifest

After creating the file in the directory, configure the kubelet on the node to set staticPodPath value in the kubelet config file.

Restart the kubelet service.