Annotations can add non-identifying metadata to Kubernetes objects. Some examples of annotations are the date the object was last updated, the name of the user who manages the object, phone numbers of persons responsible for the object, or tool information for debugging purposes. Annotations can hold any kind of information that is useful and can provide context about the resource. Annotations usually consist of machine-generated data. The metadata in an annotation can be small or large, structured or unstructured, and can include characters not permitted by labels. Clients such as tools and libraries can retrieve this metadata.

Tolerations are a Kubernetes Pod property that allows the Kubernetes scheduler to schedule Pods with matching taints. A taint is a Kubernetes node property that allows a node to repel a set of Pods. Tolerations are applied to Pods. Taints and tolerations work together to ensure that Pods are not scheduled on inappropriate nodes.