Differences between kubectl cordon & drain & taint

kubectl cordon

kubectl cordon is used to mark a node as unschedulable. It won't evict pods from the node. And it won't affect the pods that are already running on the node.

kubectl cordon node

You can use kubectl uncordon to mark a node as schedulable again.

kubectl uncordon node

kubectl drain

kubectl drain is used to mark a node as unschedulable and graceful evict all the pods from the node. It will wait for the pods to be evicted before marking the node as unschedulable.

If you want to stop the node and online it again, you can use the following command:

kubectl cordon node
kubectl drain node --ignore-daemonsets=true
kubectl uncordon node

kubectl taint

kubectl taint is used to add or remove taints from a node. It won't evict pods from the node. And it won't affect the pods that are already running on the node.

kubectl taint node ubuntu-1 key=value:NoSchedule