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What is Pause container in Kubernetes?

September 28, 2023 Leave a Comment

The “pause container” is a special, internal container created and managed by Kubernetes within each pod. Its primary purpose is to serve as a placeholder for the network namespace and IPC (Inter-Process Communication) namespace for all other containers within the same pod. It is a critical component of Kubernetes’ container orchestration mechanism, providing the foundation for container-to-container communication and network isolation within a pod.

The pause container is a special type of container that is used to create a network namespace for each Pod in Kubernetes. It is responsible for routing traffic between the Pod and the outside world.

The pause container is automatically created by containerd when you start a Pod. It is not visible to kubectl, but you can see it using the ctr command. For example, the following command will list all pause containers on the node:

Here are some key characteristics and functions of the pause container:

  1. Network Namespace: The pause container shares its network namespace with all other containers in the pod. This means that all containers in the pod can communicate with each other over the same network stack, including sharing the same IP address and port space. This enables containers within the same pod to easily communicate with each other as if they were running on the same host.
  2. IPC Namespace: Similar to the network namespace, the pause container also shares its IPC namespace with other containers in the pod. This allows containers within the pod to use inter-process communication mechanisms like System V IPC and POSIX message queues to communicate with each other.
  3. Lifetime Management: The pause container is responsible for managing the lifecycle of the pod. When all other containers within the pod have completed their tasks and exited, the pause container remains running, effectively keeping the pod alive. This ensures that the resources allocated to the pod, such as network namespaces, are not prematurely released.
  4. Minimal Resource Usage: The pause container is typically minimal in terms of resource usage. It usually doesn’t run any application code or perform any specific functions other than serving as a placeholder for namespaces. Because of its minimal nature, it consumes very few system resources.
  5. Automatically Managed: Kubernetes automatically creates and manages the pause container, and it is not directly visible or configurable by users or administrators. It is created when the pod is started and terminated when the pod is deleted.

Here are some of the key benefits of using the pause container in Kubernetes:

  • Improved network isolation: The pause container creates a separate network namespace for each Pod, which helps to isolate Pods from each other. This can improve security and performance by reducing the amount of traffic that can flow between Pods.
  • Simplified network configuration: The pause container takes care of all the low-level details of networking for Pods. This makes it easier to configure and manage networks in Kubernetes.
  • Portability: The pause container is a standard component of Kubernetes, so it is available on all Kubernetes platforms. This means that you can deploy your applications to any Kubernetes cluster without having to worry about configuring networking.

How to see Pause containers using containerd cri?

$ sudo ctr –namespace=k8s.io ps

$ sudo ctr containers list

$ ctr –namespace=k8s.io inspect my-pod-pause

Rajesh Kumar
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