---
title: Pod disruption budget
description: A Pod Disruption Budget (PDB) allows you to limit the disruption to your application when its pods need to be rescheduled for some reason such as upgrades...
url: https://www.elastic.co/docs/deploy-manage/deploy/cloud-on-k8s/pod-disruption-budget
products:
  - Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes
applies_to:
  - Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes: Generally available
---

# Pod disruption budget
A [Pod Disruption Budget](https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/run-application/configure-pdb/) (PDB) allows you to limit the disruption to your application when its pods need to be rescheduled for some reason such as upgrades or routine maintenance work on the Kubernetes nodes.
Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes manages either a single default PDB, or multiple PDBs per Elasticsearch resource depending on the license level of the ECK installation.
<note>
  In Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes 3.1 and earlier, all clusters follow the [default PodDisruptionBudget rules](#default-pdb-rules), regardless of license type.
</note>


## Advanced rules (Enterprise license required)

<applies-to>
  - Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes: Generally available since 3.2
</applies-to>

In Elasticsearch clusters managed by ECK and licensed with an Enterprise license, PDBs are created based on Elasticsearch node roles, allowing Kubernetes upgrade or maintenance operations to be executed more quickly. Multiple `nodeSets` with the same roles, such as `master` or `ml`, are combined into a single PDB. Each PDB permits one Elasticsearch Pod to be disrupted at a time, provided the Elasticsearch cluster maintains the health status described in the following table.

| Role                  | Cluster health required | Notes                                                                                                                               |
|-----------------------|-------------------------|-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------|
| master                | Yellow                  |                                                                                                                                     |
| data                  | Green                   | All Data roles are grouped together into a single PDB, except for data_frozen.                                                      |
| data_frozen           | Yellow                  | Since frozen data tier nodes only host partially mounted indices backed by searchable snapshots additional disruptions are allowed. |
| ingest                | Yellow                  |                                                                                                                                     |
| ml                    | Yellow                  |                                                                                                                                     |
| coordinating          | Yellow                  |                                                                                                                                     |
| transform             | Yellow                  |                                                                                                                                     |
| remote_cluster_client | Yellow                  |                                                                                                                                     |

Single-node clusters are not considered highly available and can always be disrupted regardless of license type.

## Default rules (Basic license)

<note>
  In Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes 3.1 and earlier, all clusters follow this behavior regardless of license type.
</note>

In Elastic Cloud on Kubernetes clusters that do not have an Enterprise license, one Elasticsearch Pod can be taken down at a time, as long as the cluster has a health status of `green`. Single-node clusters are not considered highly available and can always be disrupted.

## Overriding the default behavior

In the Elasticsearch specification, you can change the default behavior in two ways. By fully overriding the PodDisruptionBudget within the Elasticsearch spec or by disabling the default PodDisruptionBudget and specifying one or more PodDisruptionBudget(s).

### Specify your own PodDisruptionBudget

You can fully override the default PodDisruptionBudget by specifying your own PodDisruptionBudget in the Elasticsearch spec.
```yaml
apiVersion: elasticsearch.k8s.elastic.co/v1
kind: Elasticsearch
metadata:
  name: quickstart
spec:
  version: 9.3.3
  nodeSets:
  - name: default
    count: 3
  podDisruptionBudget:
    spec:
      minAvailable: 2
      selector:
        matchLabels:
          elasticsearch.k8s.elastic.co/cluster-name: quickstart
```

This will cause the ECK operator to only create the PodDisruptionBudget defined in the spec. It will not create any additional PodDisruptionBudgets.
<note>
  [`maxUnavailable`](https://kubernetes.io/docs/tasks/run-application/configure-pdb/#arbitrary-controllers-and-selectors) cannot be used with an arbitrary label selector, therefore `minAvailable` is used in this example.
</note>


### Create a PodDisruptionBudget per nodeSet

You can specify a PDB per `nodeSet` or node role.
```yaml
apiVersion: elasticsearch.k8s.elastic.co/v1
kind: Elasticsearch
metadata:
  name: quickstart
spec:
  podDisruptionBudget: {} 
  version: 9.3.3
  nodeSets:
    - name: master
      count: 3
      config:
        node.roles: "master"
        node.store.allow_mmap: false
    - name: hot
      count: 2
      config:
        node.roles: ["data_hot", "data_content", "ingest"]
        node.store.allow_mmap: false

apiVersion: policy/v1
kind: PodDisruptionBudget
metadata:
  name: master-nodes-pdb
spec:
  minAvailable: 2 
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      elasticsearch.k8s.elastic.co/cluster-name: quickstart 
      elasticsearch.k8s.elastic.co/statefulset-name: quickstart-es-master 

apiVersion: policy/v1
kind: PodDisruptionBudget
metadata:
  name: hot-nodes-pdb
spec:
  minAvailable: 1 
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      elasticsearch.k8s.elastic.co/cluster-name: quickstart 
      elasticsearch.k8s.elastic.co/statefulset-name: quickstart-es-hot 
```