Here are the main Kubernetes components with brief descriptions:

Control Plane Components:

• kube-apiserver: Frontend for the K8s control plane; exposes the K8s API
• etcd: Consistent and highly-available key-value store for all cluster data
• kube-scheduler: Watches for newly created pods with no assigned node, selects nodes for them
• kube-controller-manager: Runs controller processes (node, replication, endpoints, service account & token controllers)
• cloud-controller-manager: Embeds cloud-specific control logic

Node Components:

• kubelet: Agent that runs on each node; ensures containers are running in a Pod
• kube-proxy: Network proxy that maintains network rules on nodes
• Container runtime: Software responsible for running containers (Docker, containerd, CRI-O)

Add-on Components:

• DNS: Cluster DNS service for service discovery
• Dashboard: Web-based UI for cluster management
• Network plugins: Implement the Container Network Interface (CNI) for pod networking
• Storage plugins: Provide persistent storage solutions