kubectl cluster-info why is running on control plane and not master node

Question

Why kubectl cluster-info is running on control plane and not master node And on the control plane it is running on a specific IP Address https://192.168.49.2:8443 and not not localhost or 127.0.0.1 Running the following command in terminal:

1. minikube start --driver=docker

😄 minikube v1.20.0 on Ubuntu 16.04 ✨ Using the docker driver based on user configuration 🎉 minikube 1.21.0 is available! Download it: https://github.com/kubernetes/minikube/releases/tag/v1.21.0 💡 To disable this notice, run: 'minikube config set WantUpdateNotification false'

👍 Starting control plane node minikube in cluster minikube 🚜 Pulling base image ... > gcr.io/k8s-minikube/kicbase...: 358.10 MiB / 358.10 MiB 100.00% 797.51 K ❗ minikube was unable to download gcr.io/k8s-minikube/kicbase:v0.0.22, but successfully downloaded kicbase/stable:v0.0.22 as a fallback image 🔥 Creating docker container (CPUs=2, Memory=2200MB) ... 🐳 Preparing Kubernetes v1.20.2 on Docker 20.10.6 ... ▪ Generating certificates and keys ... ▪ Booting up control plane ... ▪ Configuring RBAC rules ... 🔎 Verifying Kubernetes components... ▪ Using image gcr.io/k8s-minikube/storage-provisioner:v5 🌟 Enabled addons: storage-provisioner, default-storageclass 🏄 Done! kubectl is now configured to use "minikube" cluster and "default" namespace by default

2. kubectl cluster-info

Kubernetes control plane is running at https://192.168.49.2:8443 KubeDNS is running at https://192.168.49.2:8443/api/v1/namespaces/kube-system/services/kube-dns:dns/proxy

To further debug and diagnose cluster problems, use 'kubectl cluster-info dump'.

Answer 1

The Kubernetes project is making an effort to move away from wording that can be considered offensive, with one concrete recommendation being renaming master to control-plane. In other words control-plane and master mean essentially the same thing, and the goal is to switch the terminology to use control-plane exclusively going forward. (More info in this answer)

The kubectl command is a command line interface that executes on a client (i.e your computer) and interacts with the cluster through the control-plane. The IP address you are seing through cluster-info is the IP address through which you reach the control-plane