The PodLifeTime plugin evicts pods based on their age, status phase, condition transitions, container states, exit codes, and owner kinds. It can be used for simple age-based eviction or for fine-grained cleanup of pods matching specific transition criteria.

How It Works

The plugin builds a filter chain from the configured criteria. All non-empty filter categories are ANDed together (a pod must satisfy every specified filter to be evicted). Within each filter category, items are ORed (matching any one entry satisfies that filter).

Once pods are selected, they are sorted by their creation time with the oldest first, then evicted in order. Eviction stops when limits are reached (per-node limits, total limits, or Pod Disruption Budget constraints).

Use Cases

Evict completed/succeeded pods that have been idle too long:

args:
  states: [Succeeded]
  conditions:
    - reason: PodCompleted
      status: "True"
      minTimeSinceLastTransitionSeconds: 14400  # 4 hours

Evict failed pods, excluding Job-owned pods:

args:
  states: [Failed]
  exitCodes: [1]
  ownerKinds:
    exclude: [Job]
  maxPodLifeTimeSeconds: 3600
  includingInitContainers: true

Resource Leakage Mitigation: Restart long-running pods that may have accumulated memory leaks:
```
args:
  maxPodLifeTimeSeconds: 604800  # 7 days
  states: [Running]
```

Clean up stuck pods in CrashLoopBackOff:

args:
  states: [CrashLoopBackOff, ImagePullBackOff]

Evict pods owned only by specific kinds:

args:
  states: [Succeeded, Failed]
  ownerKinds:
    include: [Job]
  maxPodLifeTimeSeconds: 600

Configuration

Parameter	Description	Type	Required	Default
`maxPodLifeTimeSeconds`	Pods older than this many seconds are evicted	`uint`	No*	`nil`
`states`	Filter pods by phase, pod status reason, or container waiting/terminated reason. A pod matches if any of its state values appear in this list	`[]string`	No	`nil`
`conditions`	Only evict pods with matching status conditions (see PodConditionFilter)	`[]PodConditionFilter`	No	`nil`
`exitCodes`	Only evict pods with matching container terminated exit codes	`[]int32`	No	`nil`
`ownerKinds`	Include or exclude pods by owner reference kind	`OwnerKinds`	No	`nil`
`namespaces`	Limit eviction to specific namespaces (include or exclude)	`Namespaces`	No	`nil`
`labelSelector`	Only evict pods matching these labels	`metav1.LabelSelector`	No	`nil`
`includingInitContainers`	Extend state/exitCode filtering to init containers	`bool`	No	`false`
`includingEphemeralContainers`	Extend state filtering to ephemeral containers	`bool`	No	`false`

*At least one filtering criterion must be specified (maxPodLifeTimeSeconds, states, conditions, or exitCodes).

States

The states field matches pods using an OR across these categories:

Category	Examples
Pod phase	`Running`, `Pending`, `Succeeded`, `Failed`, `Unknown`
Pod status reason	`NodeAffinity`, `NodeLost`, `Shutdown`, `UnexpectedAdmissionError`
Container waiting reason	`CrashLoopBackOff`, `ImagePullBackOff`, `ErrImagePull`, `CreateContainerConfigError`, `CreateContainerError`, `InvalidImageName`, `PodInitializing`, `ContainerCreating`
Container terminated reason	`OOMKilled`, `Error`, `Completed`, `DeadlineExceeded`, `Evicted`, `ContainerCannotRun`, `StartError`

When includingInitContainers is true, init container states are also checked. When includingEphemeralContainers is true, ephemeral container states are also checked.

PodConditionFilter

Each condition filter matches against pod.status.conditions[] entries. Within a single filter, all specified field-level checks must match (AND). Unset fields are not checked. Across the list, condition filters are ORed — a pod is eligible for eviction if any of the listed condition filters match.

Field	Description
`type`	Condition type (e.g., `Ready`, `Initialized`, `ContainersReady`)
`status`	Condition status (`True`, `False`, `Unknown`)
`reason`	Condition reason (e.g., `PodCompleted`)
`minTimeSinceLastTransitionSeconds`	Require the matching condition's `lastTransitionTime` to be at least this many seconds in the past

At least one of these fields must be set per filter entry.

When minTimeSinceLastTransitionSeconds is set on a filter, a pod's condition must both match the type/status/reason fields AND have transitioned long enough ago. If the condition has no lastTransitionTime, it does not match.

OwnerKinds

Field	Description
`include`	Only evict pods owned by these kinds
`exclude`	Do not evict pods owned by these kinds

At most one of include/exclude may be set.

Example

Age-based eviction with state filter

apiVersion: descheduler/v1alpha2
kind: DeschedulerPolicy
profiles:
  - name: default
    plugins:
      deschedule:
        enabled:
          - name: PodLifeTime
    pluginConfig:
      - name: PodLifeTime
        args:
          maxPodLifeTimeSeconds: 86400  # 1 day
          states:
            - Running
          namespaces:
            include:
              - default

Transition-based eviction for completed pods

apiVersion: descheduler/v1alpha2
kind: DeschedulerPolicy
profiles:
  - name: default
    plugins:
      deschedule:
        enabled:
          - name: PodLifeTime
    pluginConfig:
      - name: PodLifeTime
        args:
          states:
            - Succeeded
          conditions:
            - reason: PodCompleted
              status: "True"
              minTimeSinceLastTransitionSeconds: 14400
          namespaces:
            include:
              - default

This configuration evicts Succeeded pods in the default namespace that have a PodCompleted condition with status True and whose last matching transition happened more than 4 hours ago.