Q2 AKS Domain 1 · 20–25% of exam

You need to prevent a node pool from running user workloads while still allowing kube-system pods. Which mechanism do you use?

  1. A Node selector
  2. B Pod disruption budget
  3. C Taint with effect NoSchedule and matching toleration in kube-system pods (correct answer)
  4. D Cordon the node

Shortcut: Tainting system nodes with CriticalAddonsOnly:NoSchedule (added automatically to system node pools) prevents regular workloads from scheduling. kube-system pods have the matching toleration.