Kubernetes Practical By Samson Tanimawo, PhD Published Mar 18, 2026 4 min read

DaemonSet: When You Need One

DaemonSets run a pod per node. When that's right.

Yes

Per-node logging agent. Per-node monitoring agent. Per-node CNI.

Each node needs its own copy.

No

Application workloads. They should scale by load, not node count.

DaemonSet wastes capacity.

Design

Tolerations to run on tainted nodes. Resource requests sized to fit any node.

Daemons must work everywhere.