What is a worker node in Kubernetes?

A worker node in Kubernetes is a server (virtual or physical machine) on which application containers are run. Each worker node contains the necessary components to run pods, such as a container runtime (e.g., Docker), kubelet — an agent that manages the state of pods on the node, and kube-proxy — a component for network communication.

The main task of a worker node is to accept tasks from the control plane (master node) and ensure the execution of containers according to the specified configuration.

Example structure of a worker node:

Worker Node
├── kubelet
├── kube-proxy
└── Container Runtime (Docker, containerd)