Understanding Kubernetes: Part 6 -DaemonSets

If you’ve been following our Kubernetes series 2025, welcome back! For new readers, check out Part 5: Understanding Kubernetes: Part 5 -Deployment

What is a DaemonSet in Kubernetes?

A DaemonSet in Kubernetes ensures that a specific pod runs on all (or a subset of) nodes in a cluster. It is used to deploy services or components that need to run on every node to provide functionalities like logging, monitoring, or networking.

For example, if we need to collect logs from all nodes using Fluentd or monitor node metrics with Prometheus Node Exporter, we deploy a DaemonSet to ensure these pods run consistently across all nodes

DaemonSets automatically schedule one pod per node. They also manage pods dynamically; if a new node is added to the cluster, the DaemonSet automatically deploys the pod to it. Similarly, pods are removed when a node is removed. You can further control deployment using node selectors, tolerations, or affinity rules

In my previous role, I used DaemonSets to deploy Fluentd for log collection across our EKS cluster. This allowed us to stream application logs from all nodes to our centralized logging system seamlessly. We configured node affinity to target specific nodes, ensuring optimal resource usage

Here’s a simple YAML for deploying a DaemonSet:

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: DaemonSet
metadata:
  name: log-collector
spec:
  template:
    spec:
      containers:
      - name: fluentd
        image: fluentd:latest
```"

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