Kubernetes: Evenly distribute the replicas across the cluster

Question

We can use DaemonSet object to deploy one replica on each node. How can we deploy say 2 replicas or 3 replicas per node? How can we achieve that. please let us know

Answer 1

By default, the kubernetes scheduler will prefer to schedule pods on different nodes.

1. The kubernetes scheduler will first determine all possible nodes where a pod can be deployed based on your affinity/anti-affinity/resource limits/etc.

2. Afterward, the scheduler will find the best node where the pod can be deployed. The scheduler will automatically schedule the pods to be on separate availability zones and on separate nodes if this is possible of course.

You can try this on your own. For example, if you have 3 nodes, try deploying 9 replicas of a pod. You will see that each node will have 2 pods running.

Answer 2

There is no way to force x pods per node the way a Daemonset does. However, with some planning, you can force a fairly even pod distribution across your nodes using pod anti affinity.

Let's say we have 10 nodes. The first thing is we need to have a ReplicaSet (deployment) with 30 pods (3 per node). Next, we want to set the pod anti affinity to use preferredDuringSchedulingIgnoredDuringExecution with a relatively high weight and match the deployment's labels. This will cause the scheduler to prefer not scheduling pods where the same pod already exists. Once there is 1 pod per node, the cycle starts over again. A node with 2 pods will be weighted lower than one with 1 pod so the next pod should try to go there.

Note this is not as precise as a DaemonSet and may run into some limitations when it comes time to scale up or down the cluster.

A more reliable way if scaling the cluster is to simply create multiple DaemonSets with different names, but identical in every other way. Since the DaemonSets will have the same labels, they can all be exposed through the same service.