what is the benefit of the taint model over node selector

Question

I am learning Kubernetes, and and faced a conceptual question, what is the benefit of new taint model over the simple node selector.

Documentation talks about a usecase where a group of devs might have exclusive right for a set of pods by a taint like dedicated=groupA:NoSchedule. But I thought we can do the same thing by a simple nodeSelector.

To be more specific, what is the role of the effect on this taint. Why not simply a label like the rest of the Kubernetes.

Answer 1

A node selector affects a single pod template, asking the scheduler to place it on a set of nodes. A NoSchedule taint affects all pods asking the scheduler to block all pods from being scheduled there.

A node selector is useful when the pod needs something from the node. For example, requesting a node that has a GPU. A node taint is useful when the node needs to be reserved for special workloads. For example, a node that should only be running pods that will use the GPU (so the GPU node isn't filled with pods that aren't using it).

Sometimes they are useful together as in the example above, too. You want the node to only have pods that use the GPU, and you want the pod that needs a GPU to be scheduled to a GPU node. In that case you may want to taint the node with dedicated=gpu:NoSchedule and add both a taint toleration and node selector to the pod template.