What is Kubernetes Topology Manager?

Question

Accepted Answer

**Topology Manager** — coordinates resource alignment across CPU, memory, and device topology.

```yaml
# Kubelet configuration
apiVersion: kubelet.config.k8s.io/v1beta1
kind: KubeletConfiguration
topologyManagerPolicy: "best-effort"
t topologyManagerScope: "pod"
topologyManagerMaxAllowable NUMANodes: 1
```

```yaml
# Pod requesting NUMA-aligned resources
apiVersion: v1
kind: Pod
metadata:
  name: numa-pod
spec:
  containers:
  - name: app
    image: myapp:latest
    resources:
      limits:
        cpu: "4"
        memory: "8Gi"
        nvidia.com/gpu: "1"
      requests:
        cpu: "4"
        memory: "8Gi"
        nvidia.com/gpu: "1"
    # Topology hints will be computed automatically
```

```bash
# Check topology
kubectl describe node node-1 | grep -A 20 "Allocated resources"
cat /sys/devices/system/node/node0/cpulist
numactl --hardware
```

**Policies:**
- none: no topology management.
- best-effort: try to align, don't reject.
- restricted: align or reject Pod.
- single-numa-node: all resources on one NUMA node.

**Use cases:**
- High-performance computing.
- Low-latency applications.
- GPU workloads.

DevOps: What is Kubernetes Topology Manager?