The Kubernetes node is a slave node in the Kubernetes cluster. It is controlled by the Kubernetes master to run container applications using Docker (http://docker.com) or rkt (http://coreos.com/rkt/docs/latest/). In this book, we will use the Docker container runtime as the default engine.
Node or slave?
The term slave is used in the computer industry to represent the cluster worker node; however, it is also associated with discrimination. The Kubernetes project uses minion in the early version and node in the current version.
The following diagram displays the role and tasks of daemon processes in the node:
The node also has two daemon processes, named kubelet and kube-proxy, to support its functionalities.