Master replica nodes are responsible for duplicating the functionality and data contained on master nodes within a Kubernetes cluster configured for high availability. To benefit from increased uptime and resilience, you can host master replica nodes in different zones, and configure them to load balance for your Kubernetes cluster.

Replica nodes are designed to mirror the master node configuration and the current cluster state in real time so that if the master nodes become unavailable the Kubernetes cluster can fail over to the replica nodes automatically whenever they are needed. In the event that a master node fails, the API continues to be available, the cluster can respond automatically to other node failures and you can still perform regular operations for creating and editing existing resources within the cluster.