<p>I see that docker daemon use a lot of CPU.  As I understand the kubelet and the dockerd communicate with each other to maintain the state of the cluster.  But does dockerd for some reason do extra runtime work after containers are started that would spike CPU?  To get information to report to kubelet?</p>

lucidquiet
<blockquote>
  <p>But does dockerd for some reason do extra runtime work after containers are started that would spike CPU?</p>
</blockquote>

<p>Not really unless you have another container or process constantly calling the docker API or running a docker command from the CLI.</p>

<p>The kubelet talks to the docker daemon through a <a href="https://github.com/kubernetes/kubernetes/tree/release-1.5/pkg/kubelet/dockershim" rel="nofollow noreferrer">docker shim</a> to do everything that it needs to run containers, so I would check if the kubelet is doing some extra works, maybe scheduling and then evicting/stopping containers. </p>
