Understanding Kubernetes: Part 24 Taints and Tolerations

📢 If you’ve been following our Kubernetes series 2025, welcome back! For new readers, check out Part 23 Node Selector

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What is a Taint?

A taint is a property applied to a node that prevents Pods from being scheduled on it unless they have a matching toleration.

What is a Toleration?

A toleration is a property set in a Pod specification that allows the Pod to be scheduled on a tainted node.

Use Cases

Taints and Tolerations are useful in various scenarios:

1. Dedicated Nodes for Specific Workloads

• Running GPU workloads only on specialized GPU nodes.
• Ensuring that high-priority applications run on high-performance nodes.

2. Isolation of Workloads

• Keeping test workloads separate from production environments.
• Running database workloads on dedicated nodes.

3. Preventing Scheduling on Faulty or Maintenance Nodes