Operator Status, State, Stage, and Condition Definitions

This document provides concise definitions for the status, state, stage, and condition concepts used throughout the Skyhook operator to track package operations and node lifecycle management.

Key Relationships

• Status reflects the overall health and progress of nodes and the Skyhook resource

• State tracks the execution status of individual package operations

• Stage defines the specific lifecycle phase a package is currently in

• A node's Status is derived from the collective States of its packages

• Stages progress sequentially, with State indicating success/failure at each stage

• All stages except for interrupts include validation checks that must succeed for progression

Usage in Operations

• Monitoring: Use Status for high-level health checks and dashboards
• Debugging: Examine State and Stage for detailed package-level troubleshooting
• Automation: State transitions trigger the next appropriate Stage in the lifecycle
• Scheduling: Status values like blocked and paused control operation scheduling and dependencies

Status

Scope: Applied to the overall Skyhook resource and individual nodes
Purpose: High-level operational status indicating the current condition

Status	Definition
complete	All operations have finished successfully
blocked	Operations are prevented from proceeding due to taint toleration issues
waiting	Queued for execution but not yet started
disabled	Execution is disabled but will continue for other Skyhooks
paused	Execution is paused for this and all other Skyhooks supposed to be executed after this one
in_progress	Currently executing operations
erroring	Experiencing failures or errors
unknown	Status cannot be determined or is uninitialized

Conditions

Skyhook publishes Kubernetes conditions on .status.conditions. The Ready condition is the standard user-facing summary for kubectl wait --for=condition=Ready, while other condition types report specific operator states that can coexist with Ready.

Ready Condition

Ready is a boolean projection of the Skyhook's multivalued .status.status field:

.status.status	Ready.status	Ready.reason	Meaning
complete	True	NodesConverged	All targeted nodes have completed successfully
in_progress	False	Progressing	Work is actively running on at least one node
blocked	False	Blocked	Progress is blocked, such as by taint toleration or ignored nodes
erroring	False	Erroring	One or more nodes are failing
paused	False	Paused	Processing is paused by annotation
waiting	False	Waiting	Nodes are waiting for ordering or batch admission
disabled	False	Disabled	Processing is disabled by annotation
unknown	False	Unknown	The operator cannot yet determine a stable state

.status.status remains the canonical rollout summary used by the operator's scheduling and state machine. Ready exists to expose that state in Kubernetes condition form for standard tooling, while .status.nodeStatus remains the authoritative per-node source of truth.

Ready Condition Message

The Ready.message field summarizes node progress by status:

• It always starts with <complete>/<total> nodes complete.
• It appends one segment for each non-empty node-status bucket, such as <count> in progress, <count> blocked, or <count> erroring.
• When a bucket has a short node list, the node names are included in sorted order: 2 blocked (node-a, node-b).
• When a bucket exceeds the message cap, the node names are dropped and the segment becomes (list truncated; see controller logs).

Example for a small rollout:

1/3 nodes complete (node-a), 1 in progress (node-b), 1 blocked (node-c)

Example for a large rollout:

0/800 nodes complete, 800 in progress (list truncated; see controller logs)

The truncation cap exists to keep condition payloads bounded for etcd object size and watch bandwidth. When truncation happens, the controller logs the full per-status node lists at Info, and .status.nodeStatus still contains the complete per-node view.

Other Condition Types

The operator also sets additional condition types that may be useful for troubleshooting:

• TaintNotTolerable: selected nodes are skipped because their taints are not tolerated by the Skyhook
• NodesIgnored: selected nodes are skipped because they have the ignore label set
• ApplyPackage: the controller is applying a package to a node
• DeploymentPolicyNotFound: the referenced DeploymentPolicy is missing at reconcile time

These conditions complement, rather than replace, .status.status and Ready.

Legacy Prefixed Condition Types

Canonical condition types are now the bare names above, such as Ready and TaintNotTolerable. During the one-release deprecation window, the operator also mirrors them to the legacy prefixed condition types for backward compatibility:

• Ready continues to be emitted as skyhook.nvidia.com/Ready
• the rollout-transition summary also remains available as skyhook.nvidia.com/Transition
• other bare condition types continue to be mirrored as skyhook.nvidia.com/<Type>

New consumers should read the canonical bare condition types now. Existing consumers of the prefixed condition types should migrate during the deprecation window.

State

Scope: Applied to individual packages within a node
Purpose: Current execution state of a specific package operation

State	Definition
complete	Package operation has finished successfully
in_progress	Package is actively running (pod has started)
skipped	Package/stage was intentionally bypassed in the lifecycle
erroring	Package operation is experiencing failures
unknown	Package state cannot be determined or is uninitialized

Stage

Scope: Applied to individual packages
Purpose: Indicates which phase of the package installation/management process is currently executing

Stage	Definition
uninstall & uninstall-check	Removal of the package
upgrade & upgrade-check	Package version update operations
apply & apply-check	Initial installation/deployment of the package
config & config-check	Configuration and setup operations
interrupt	Execution of interrupt operations (e.g., reboots, service restarts)
post-interrupt & post-interrupt-check	Operations that run after interrupt completion

NOTE: All stages except for interrupts include validation checks that must succeed for progression

Stage Flow

The typical stage progression depends on whether the package has interrupts:

Without Interrupts:

uninstall → apply → config
upgrade → config

With Interrupts:

When a package requires an interrupt, the node is first cordoned and drained before package operations begin:

uninstall (if downgrading) → cordon → wait → drain → apply → config → interrupt → post-interrupt
cordon → wait → drain → upgrade (if upgrading) → config → interrupt → post-interrupt

Note: The cordon, wait, and drain phases ensure that workloads are safely removed from the node before any package operations that require interrupts (such as reboots or kernel module changes) are executed.

Skyhook Status Fields

The Skyhook resource's .status object includes fields that track batch rollout state. Two fields are particularly relevant for batch stickiness and node ordering:

Field	Definition
NodePriority	Tracks which nodes are in the current active batch. A node stays in NodePriority from the time it is selected for a batch until it completes all packages. Prevents the controller from selecting new nodes while current batch nodes are between packages.
NodeOrderOffset	Cumulative count of nodes removed from NodePriority. Combined with a node's position in the sorted NodePriority map, this produces the monotonic SKYHOOK_NODE_ORDER value injected into package pods.

Both fields are persisted in the CRD and survive controller restarts. They are cleared by kubectl skyhook reset and kubectl skyhook deployment-policy reset.