Create static Pods [page]deterministic

tasks

This page shows you how to create _static Pods_ on a node. For an overview of what static Pods are and when to use them, see [Static Pods](/docs/concepts/workloads/pods/static-pods/).

This page assumes you're using [cri-o](#gloss:cri-o) to run Pods, and that your nodes are running the Fedora operating system. Instructions for other distributions or Kubernetes installations may vary.

## Create a static pod {#static-pod-creation}

You can configure a static Pod with either a [file system hosted configuration file](#configuration-files) or a [web hosted configuration file](#pods-created-via-http).

### Filesystem-hosted static Pod manifest {#configuration-files}

Manifests are standard Pod definitions in JSON or YAML format in a specific directory. Use the `staticPodPath: <the directory>` field in the [kubelet configuration file](/docs/reference/config-api/kubelet-config.v1beta1/), which periodically scans the directory and creates/deletes static Pods as YAML/JSON files appear/disappear there. Note that the kubelet will ignore files starting with dots when scanning the specified directory.

> Caution: The kubelet processes all files not starting with a dot in the static Pod directory — there is no filtering by file extension. For example, if you create a backup of a manifest by running `cp kube-apiserver.yaml kube-apiserver.yaml.backup`, the kubelet will read both files and attempt to create a static Pod from each. When two files define a Pod with the same name, the resulting behavior is undefined and can cause the backup's outdated spec to silently take effect instead of the current manifest. If you do create a backup, store it outside the static Pod directory (for example, in `/etc/kubernetes/backup/`).

For example, this is how to start a simple web server as a static Pod:

1. Choose a node where you want to run the static Pod. In this example, it's `my-node1`.

```shell ssh my-node1 ```

1. Choose a directory, say `/etc/kubernetes/manifests` and place a web server Pod definition there, for example `/etc/kubernetes/manifests/static-web.yaml`:

```shell # Run this command on the node where kubelet is running mkdir -p /etc/kubernetes/manifests/ cat <<EOF >/etc/kubernetes/manifests/static-web.yaml apiVersion: v1 kind: Pod metadata: name: static-web labels: role: myrole spec: containers: - name: web image: nginx ports: - name: web containerPort: 80 protocol: TCP EOF ```

1. Configure the kubelet on that node to set a `staticPodPath` value in the [kubelet configuration file](/docs/reference/config-api/kubelet-config.v1beta1/). See [Set Kubelet Parameters Via A Configuration File](/docs/tasks/administer-cluster/kubelet-config-file/) for more information.

An alternative and deprecated method is to configure the kubelet on that node to look for static Pod manifests locally, using a command line argument. To use the deprecated approach, start the kubelet with the `--pod-manifest-path=/etc/kubernetes/manifests/` argument. 1. Restart the kubelet. On Fedora, you would run:

```shell # Run this command on the node where the kubelet is running systemctl restart kubelet ```

### Web-hosted static pod manifest {#pods-created-via-http}

Kubelet periodically downloads a file specified by `--manifest-url=<URL>` argument and interprets it as a JSON/YAML file that contains Pod definitions. Similar to how [filesystem-hosted manifests](#configuration-files) work, the kubelet refetches the manifest on a schedule. If there are changes to the list of static Pods, the kubelet applies them.

To use this approach:

1. Create a YAML file and store it on a web server so that you can pass the URL of that file to the kubelet.

```yaml apiVersion: v1 kind: Pod metadata: name: static-web labels: role: myrole spec: containers …(trimmed)