<p>I started a minikube cluster (single node cluster) on my local machine with the command:</p>
<pre><code>minikube start --driver=virtualbox
</code></pre>
<p>Now, when I execute the command:</p>
<pre><code>kubectl get nodes
</code></pre>
<p>it returns:</p>
<pre><code> NAME       STATUS   ROLES    AGE     VERSION 
minikube    Ready   master   2m59s    v1.19.0
</code></pre>
<p>My question is: since the cluster has only one node and according to the previous command it is a master node, what is the worker node? Are the master and worker nodes the same node in case of a single node cluster?</p>

alex_the_great
<p>The answer to your question is yes in your case your master node is itself a worker node.</p>
<p><code>Cluster</code> The group of vm or physical computers.</p>
<p><code>Master</code> is the where control plane component installed such as etcd,controller-manager,api-server which are necessary to control the whole cluster state. In best practices and big production cluster never ever use master node to schedule application related workload.</p>
<p><code>Worker node</code> is the simple plane VM where docker and kubernetes packages installed but not installed the control-plane component etc. Normally worker node is used to handle your application related workload.</p>
<blockquote>
<p>And if you have only one machine where you configure kubernetes then it becomes single node kubernetes. and it act as a master/worker.</p>
</blockquote>
<p>I hope this helps you to unsderstand</p>
