How does kubelet enforce resource limits for containers?

Kubelet plays a crucial role in managing container resources within a Kubernetes environment, and the mechanism it uses primarily revolves around monitoring and enforcing the specified resource limits for each container. When resource limits are defined for a container, kubelet ensures that the container does not exceed these limits by monitoring resource usage (CPU, memory, etc.) and taking appropriate actions to restrict the resource allocation to remain within the defined boundaries.

This enforcement is vital for maintaining the overall stability and efficiency of the Kubernetes cluster, as it prevents any single container from hogging resources, which could lead to contention and degraded performance for other containers or the node itself. By setting these boundaries, kubelet effectively creates a controlled environment where resource consumption is managed, ensuring compliance with the predefined limits without interruption of service.

Other approaches such as restarting containers or blocking excess requests would not directly enforce the limits in the ongoing operational context—rather, they may respond to issues that arise from breaches of those limits, but do not actively enforce them in real-time. Logging resource usage, while informative for monitoring and analysis, does not constitute enforcement of limits either, as it simply records resource consumption rather than actively controlling it. Hence, the selected answer encapsulates the core functionality of kubelet in resource management within