website/content/en/docs/reference/glossary/drain.md

title	id	date	full_link	short_description	tags
Drain	drain	2024-12-27		Safely evicts Pods from a Node to prepare for maintenance or removal.	fundamental operation

The process of safely evicting {{< glossary_tooltip text="Pods" term_id="pod" >}} from a {{< glossary_tooltip text="Node" term_id="node" >}} to prepare it for maintenance or removal from a {{< glossary_tooltip text="cluster" term_id="cluster" >}}.

The kubectl drain command is used to mark a {{< glossary_tooltip text="Node" term_id="node" >}} as going out of service. When executed, it evicts all {{< glossary_tooltip text="Pods" term_id="pod" >}} from the {{< glossary_tooltip text="Node" term_id="node" >}}. If an eviction request is temporarily rejected, kubectl drain retries until all {{< glossary_tooltip text="Pods" term_id="pod" >}} are terminated or a configurable timeout is reached.